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THE BRITISH REVOLUTION 

AND 

THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 



THE BRITISH REVOLUTION 

. AND 

THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 



AN INTERPRETATION OF 
BRITISH LABOUR PROGRAMMES 



BY 

NORMAN ANGELL 




NEW YORK 
B. W. HUEBSCH 

MCMXIX 



COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY 
B. W. HUEBSCH 



PRINTED IN U. S. A. 









APR 25 1919 



ICI.A525217 



*' The old party slogans have lost their significance and 
will mean nothing to the voter of the future. For the war 
is certain to change the mind of Europe, as well as the mind 
of America. . . . 

" The men in the trenches, who have been freed from the 
economic serfdom to which some of them have been accus- 
tomed, will, it is likely, return to their homes with a new 
view and a new impatience of all mere political phrases, and 
will demand real thinking and sincere action." ^ 

" For a long time this country has lacked one of the insti- 
tutions which freemen have always and everywhere held 
fundamental. For a long time there has been no sufficient 
opportunity of counsels among the people. ... I conceive it 
to be one of the needs of the hour to restore the processes 
of common counsel. . . . 

What are the right methods of politics? Why, the right 
methods are those of public discussion. . . . We have been 
told that it is unpatriotic to criticize public opinion. Well, 
if it is, there is a deep disgrace resting upon the origins of 
this nation. This nation originated in the sharpest sort of 
criticism of public policy. . . . The whole purpose of democ- 
racy is that we may hold counsel with one another, so as not 
to depend on the understanding of one man, but to depend 
upon the common counsel of all." ^ 

" Every man should have the privilege, unmolested and un- 
criticized to utter the real convictions of his mind. ... I 
believe that the weakness of the American character is that 
there are so few growlers and kickers amongst us. . . . Dif- 
ference of opinion is a sort of mandate of conscience. . . . 
We have forgotten the very principle of our origin if we 
have forgotten how to object, how to resist, how to agitate, 
how to pull down and build up, even to the extent of revo- 
lutionary practices, if it be necessary to re-adjust matters." ^ 

WooDRow Wilson. 

^ Letter to Democratic Banquet at Newark, N. J., March 20, 1918. 

2 The Neiu Freedom. 

3 " Spurious vs. Real Patriotism," School Revieiv, Vol. 7, p. 604. 



INTRODUCTION 
A Plea for Facing Facts 

To know what a book is not, and does not profess 
to be, is often as indispensable to its due understand- 
ing as to know its positive purpose. 

This little book is not primarily a defence or 
justification of the social programmes it discusses. 
It is an attempt to explain the outstanding moral 
forces which have brought those programmes into 
being, and with which the world will have to reckon 
in facing its problem of reconstruction. The author 
does not regard those forces as all necessarily benefi- 
cent: indeed, he is at pains to explain why he re- 
gards some of them as particularly dangerous and 
menacing. In fact, what is attempted in these pages 
is not so much advocacy as explanation. 

Nor is any attempt made to analyse exhaustively, 
in economic and sociological terms, each detail of 
the programmes. For, more important than the 
precise measures proposed, are the forces — social, 
economic, moral and intellectual — that have pro- 
voked those measures and stand behind them, and 
may extend them in the future. We have had ex- 
treme socialist, or socialistic programmes before. 
Socialism has Indeed been the creed of large par- 

[vii] 



ties In European states for three-quarters of a cen- 
tury, but we have not been very greatly disturbed. 
Certain moral and psychological factors were neces- 
sary to give the essential features of socialist pro- 
grammes even a chance of trial, still less of success. 
An attempt is here made to show to what extent the 
war has brought into operation social and moral 
factors that previously were absent, has set up con- 
ditions which make programmes or movements here- 
tofore of no particular importance, now of the very 
greatest importance. For although it is common 
enough to talk of the great spiritual changes and 
developments which the war must bring, one may 
doubt whether it is as common to enquire very care- 
fully into the nature and extent of those changes, and 
to examine the fashion in which they are expressing 
themselves among peoples subject more completely, 
and for a longer period, than have been the Ameri- 
can to the Influence of war legislation. 

By a combination of events no man could have fore- 
seen, the real question which presents Itself to west- 
ern civilization on the morrow of Its victory over the 
Central Empires, Is not the future of Prussian mili- 
tarism or even of political democracy. It is the 
future of the Institution of private property, and the 
degree and kind of industrial democracy which we 
intend In future to permit. The political, historical 
and geographical questions which have absorbed so 
much expert attention during the war, are likely to 
be subsidiary to much wider general questions, social, 
economic, moral In their nature. 

By w'hat process does a war, arising out of conflicts 
[viii] 



of nationality and the political ambitions of great 
military states, draw to its close with those questions 
pushed relatively into the background while others so 
different in their nature are rapidly emerging? The 
answer to that question is to be found in an examina- 
tion of the problem which the Russian Revolution has 
presented to Western civilization. Soviet Russia is 
demanding the right, not alone to repudiate Its for- 
eign indebtedness, but to regard those who do not 
subscribe to its communistic principles as without 
title to participate In the government of the state. 
The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is employing 
against the educated and property-owning classes the 
same ferocious repressions which Czardom has used 
against popular movements In the past. 

The Bolshevists today are refusing to admit to par- 
ticipation In their communistic state those who repu- 
diate Its moral foundations. They plead that 
bourgeois practice justifies them. In most states the 
man who will not give his life to the purposes of the 
government — who resists, for instance, military 
conscription for the political ends of his government 
— is shot. Those who persist In encouraging that 
kind of resistance are imprisoned. Bolshevism has 
taken the ground that those who refuse to surrender 
their property, and encourage others In that refusal, 
should be deprived at least of their citizenship. 

One need not subscribe to Bolshevist logic-chop- 
ping to admit the real difficulty of the issues Involved, 
their searching and far-reaching implications. 

The proletarian autocracy Is as aggressive In Its 
way as was the military autocracy of Prussia. Wc 

[ix] 



may see it spread tomorrow to a revolutionary Ger- 
many also adopting a confiscatory socialism and in 
sympathetic co-operation with Russia and certain of 
the lesser Slavic states. 

Shall we permit this? Can this be regarded as 
democracy? American public opinion — if the 
newspaper attitude towards the Bolsheviks is any in- 
dication thereof at all — seems disposed to answer 
those questions with a violent negative. But the 
British public curiously enough is not so certain by 
any means. This little book attempts to explain 
why. 

The truth Is that the difference between the Amer- 
ican and the European democracies In this matter is 
a profound one : it is a difference as to the meaning of 
democracy. In America that word means political 
democracy — control by the people over the political 
acts of their state. To the peoples of Europe — or 
to very large masses of them — the word Is already 
beginning to take on a very much larger meaning: 
the right of the people to control, not only their polit- 
ical, but their industrial life and government; the 
right of the workers themselves to determine the con- 
ditions of their daily lives, by controlling the eco- 
nomic basis of the community, the means of produc- 
tion, distribution, exchange. And by that fact the 
problem of democracy has become intimately related 
to the problems, ethical and economic, which gather 
around the institution of private property. Our pol- 
icy towards communistic Russia will define our atti- 
tude to those issues. 



[x] 



It is thus that towards the close of this war waged 
to make the world safe for democracy, the question 
which most paradoxically overshadows all others, is 
whether our victory will be used for the purpose of 
forbidding a large part of the human race to try a 
great social experiment, the experiment of industrial, 
as distinct from political democracy, based upon the 
abolition of private property. For three quarters 
of a century schools of Socialistic thought, both 
French and German (for we are apt to forget that 
the Socialism which we regard as " made in Ger- 
many " came originally from France) , have promul- 
gated the doctrine that " property is theft." Bol- 
shevist Russia has put that doctrine into practice, and 
declared that none participating in that theft can 
share in the government of the Russian state. At 
present writing we are showing a disposition to take 
the line that this exclusion of the property-owning 
classes from any share in the government must be 
regarded as the repudiation of democracy. It may 
well be so. (The present writer happens to think 
so.) We seem (for no one is clear at present just 
why our troops are fighting the Russians) to have 
taken the ground that we shall wage war as relent- 
lessly upon these attempts to put the older French 
Socialist doctrines into practice, as upon Kaiserism 
itself. 

Again that may be entirely wise. But we must J 
admit that it is a very large question: as deep and 
fundamental as any which can affect the future of 
human society. It is indeed a decision as to the 
kinds of human society which will be permitted on 

[xi] 



this earth. Two questions stand out with reference 
to it. 

Was this decision — as great and vital a one as 
any that has been put before men since the Reforma- 
tion, or the winning of political rights — arrived at 
by democratic processes? Did the peoples come to 
it after full discussion, with a full knowledge of the 
facts and issues involved? Or was it decided for 
them, without their knowledge, by their govern- 
ments? Mr. Wilson has declared "that this is a 
people's war, not a statesmen's. Statesmen must fol- 
low the clarified common thought or be broken." 
" Assemblies and associations of many kinds," he 
continued, " made up of plain workaday people have 
demanded, almost every time they came together, and 
are still demanding, that the leaders of their Govern- 
ments declare to them plainly what it is, exactly what 
it is, that they are seeking in this war, and what they 
think the items of the final settlement should be." 

Has the necessary democratic condition here indi- 
cated been adhered to In the matter of vast decisions 
involved in the Russian policy? 

There can be no doubt as to the answer. The 
Allied democracies awoke one morning to find that 
they were at war with Russia and that their armies 
were invading that country. The decision had been 
made and carried out in the profoundest secrecy by the 
governments, without reference to democratic sanc- 
tion. President Wilson at an earlier period had — 
so we were given semi-ofiicially to understand — 
strongly opposed the policy of intervention, but was 
later overruled by the pressure of certain European 

[xil] 



associates. That statement has been freely made In 
the English press ; but no one really knows the truth. 
We are not permitted to know. Three persons in 
America have, since the invasion of Russia, been sen- 
tenced to twenty years' imprisonment for urging 
resistance to American participation therein. 

The Bolshevist rulers are traitors and assassins. 
Possibly; it does not dispose of the question which 
Bolshevism puts to our generation, any more than 
the crimes of the Terror disposed of the question 
which the French revolution raised for mankind. 
The League of Nations, formed after the last great 
world war a century ago decided that political experi- 
ments like that tried by France should be forbidden 
in the name of humanity and public order. As a 
matter of fact, political republicanism had proven 
Itself at the first French experiment a cruel and 
blood-thirsty monster, and but for the fact that the 
game of high politics happened to make maritime 
England an opponent of the Holy Alliance, the ex- 
periment of republicanism in Europe and In the 
Spanish colonies of this continent — which covered 
the greater part of it — would not have been per- 
mitted. For about a century those experiments 
stood the test of order, peace, security, freedom and 
democracy about as successfully as Russian Bolshev- 
ism stood It during one year. From Mexico, 
through the Caribbean to Patagonia, revolution after 
revolution. Interspersed with military dictatorship, 
" tyranny tempered by assassination," was until yes- 
terday the rule. Only now, after many generations, 
is order and democracy emerging. Certainly, dur- 

[xiil] 



ing those early struggles for Independence against 
Spain revolting colonies would have regarded as 
comic the suggestion that parties openly defending 
the old royal order should be allowed political 
participation in the state. Even In the revolting 
American colonies, now the United States, the loyal- 
ists were driven out, expropriated and defranchised. 

These considerations are no more an attempt to 
excuse, still less justify, the abominable crimes of 
Bolshevism, than a protest against lynching and Its 
abominations is an excuse for negro rape. Are we 
lynching Bolshevism or giving it a fair hearing? 

The Bolshevists themselves are proof of the In- 
effectiveness of repression. A great part of the 
power of the state during generations In Czarlst 
Russia was devoted to stamping out revolutionary, 
socialist and communist doctrines. With the result 
that Russia Is finally given into the hands of its ex- 
tremest revolutionary elements. Infected with a virus 
that could only have developed In the dark of cellars 
and prisons. Had Bolshevism been openly discussed 
in Russia during a generation; had the Bolshevists 
been obliged to submit their measures to the discus- 
sions of a free Duma, had a literate people been able 
to see in detail just what those measures meant, Bol- 
shevism would not today occupy in Russia the place 
that It undoubtedly does. And If a similar terror 
arises in Germany, It will be because in that country 
also, despite — perhaps on account of — the drilling 
and discipline, there has been absent any really free 
discussion, or training of the people in the making of 
sane decisions in political matters. 

[xiv] 



Are we to learn nothing from this? Are we our- 
selves to adopt the very methods of repression and 
violence which have produced these evils in Russia 
and in Germany? That repression and violence 
need not be governmental. The self-imposed cen- 
sorship which the unconscious impulse of partisan- 
ship imposes suffices to deprive a great public of the 
capacity for balanced decision. 

It is today at least disturbing, to read in the par- 
ticularly sober and moderate New York Nation ^ the 
following : 

For several weeks the American public was kept in a state 
of agitation by reports of a ** general massacre of all the 
upper classes" of Russia on the night of November lO. 
" It will be another Saint Bartholomew's night," said the 
dispatches; and the innocent bourgeois population of un- 
happy Russia was reported to be " in a panic of indescrib- 
able proportions." The hideous affair was pre-described, 
commented upon editorially, and, save for the practical de- 
tails of execution, carried through by the press before the 
fateful day arrived. On November 7, it was announced 
that the " Russian Ambassador " at Washington had com- 
municated with the State Department " proposing that the 
Bolsheviki and the German agents be held personally re- 
sponsible for the massacre before an international court." 
On November 11, the day after the " massacre," an abscure 
note appeared in one New York paper, the World announc- 
ing in its headline that the " threat of massacre seems to have 
been a fake." Saint Bartholomew's night apparently passed 
without incident, and the only action of the Bolsheviki which 
might mark the occasion was a general order " giving am- 
nesty to all arrested hostages and persons alleged to be in- 
volved in plots against the Soviets except those whose deten- 

^Nov. 24, tgiS. 

[xv] 



tion is deemed necessary as a guarantee for the security of 
the Bolsheviki who have fallen into enemy hands." Not one 
newspaper copied this report. Having accomplished the 
massacre it might have seemed inconsistent to bring the 
dead to life, as well as weakening to the lavishly-documented 
case against the Bolsheviki. 

Our neighbour the New Republic asks who is respon- 
sible for the lies about Russia which are being so system- 
atically disseminated in this country. We should like to 
amplify the question and ask who is responsible for all the 
particular lies about particular countries which appear in 
our press with such astonishing frequency. It would seem 
as if a master hand managed the lighting effects of the 
vast international stage. At a moment's notice any country 
in any part of the world, from Greenland to Patagonia, may 
appear upon our front pages as a paragon of virtue or a 
demon of wickedness. 

When data are presented in that way what are the 
public judgments based upon them worth? 

Consider the foregoing in the light of an appeal, 
addressed to Americans not long since by a cultivated 
Englishman, who for years has known Russia, and 
who has sympathetically tried to understand the 
Russian people. Arthur Ransome, in his " Open 
Letter to America " on the Russian Revolution, 
writes as follows : 



It may be, that, knowing so little about America, I let my- 
self think too well of it. Perhaps there too men go about 
repeating easy lies, poisoning the wells of truth from simple 
lack of attention to the hygiene of the mind. I do not know. 
I only know that, from the point of view of the Russian 
Revolution, England seems to be a vast nightmare of blind 
folly, separated from the continent, indeed from the world, 

[xvi] 



by the sea, and beyond that by the trenches, and deprived, 
by some fairy godmother who was not invited to her chris- 
tening, of the imagination to reahze what is happening be- 
yond. Shouting in daily telegrams across the wires from 
Russia I feel I am shouting at a drunken man asleep in the 
road in front of a steam roller. And then the newspapers 
of six weeks ago arrive, and I seem to see that drunk, sleep- 
ing fool make a motion as if to brush a fly from his nose, and 
take no further notice of the monstrous thing bearing steadily 
towards him. I love the real England, but I hate, more than 
I hate anything on earth (except cowardice in looking at 
the truth) the intellectual sloth, the gross mental indolence 
that prevents the English from making an effort of imagina- 
tion and realizing how shameful will be their position in his- 
tory when the story of this last year in the biography of 
democracy comes to be written. How shameful, and how 
foolish . . . for they will one day be forced to realize how 
appalling are the mistakes they committed, even from the 
mere bestial standpoint of self-interest and expediency. 
Shameful, foolish and tragic beyond tears . . . for the toll 
will be paid in English blood. English lads will die and 
English lads have died, not one or two, but hundreds of 
thousands, because their elders listen to men who think little 
things, and tell them little things, which are so terribly easy 
to repeat. At least half our worst mistakes have been due 
to the underestimation of some person or force outside Eng- 
land, and disturbing to little men who will not realize that 
chaos has come again and that giants are waking in the 
world. They look across Europe and see huge things, mons- 
trous figures, and, to save themselves, and from respect for 
other little lazy minds, they leap for the easiest tawdry ex- 
planation, and say, " Ah yes, bogies made in Germany with 
candles inside turnip heads ! " And having found their 
miserable little atheistical explanation they din it into every- 
body, so that other people shall make the same mistakes, and 
they have company in folly, and so be excused. And in the 
end It becomes difficult for even honestminded, sturdy folk 
in England to look those bogles squarely in their turnip faces 

[xvii] 



and to see that they are not bogies at all, but the real article, 
giants, whose movements in the mist are of greater import 
for the future of the world than anything else that is hap- 
pening in our day.^ 

The forces with which we are dealing cannot be 
destroyed. They can be rendered ferocious by re- 
pression, turned to the service of evil ; but in essence 
they remain. The impulses behind Communism and 
Socialism, like those behind freedom and the polit- 
ical equality of men, are perpetually recurrent in 
man's attempt to organize his society. It serves no 
purpose to dismiss these socialist and communistic 
projects as mere chimera due to madness. Those 
most apt to take that view, the staunchest Tory de- 
fenders of the old order, themselves unintentionally 
adopt the most far-reaching socialistic principles in 
the measures which they take for the prosecution of 
war. It is the war itself which has pushed forward 
communistic policies further than half a century of 
mere socialistic propaganda could have done. It is 
the war which, in giving such supreme power to the 
state, has raised once more all the issues involved in 
this discussion. Those issues are not new. They 
are part of the problem of the relation of the individ- 
ual to society, of the conflict between individual rights 
and social obligation which Is older than man himself, 
since the Instinct we Inherit from the herd and the 
flock enters into it. 

These issues Involve differences as profound as 
those which marked phases of human development 

iProm the pamphlet, On Behalf of Russia, published by The 
New Republic. 

[xviii] 



like the wars of religion; difficulties as great as those 
which had to be overcome before we could achieve 
the establishment of religious toleration. Will de- 
mocracy, facing a new form of the old questions, re- 
peat the errors which led us so far astray in the 
prof oundest thing that touches us — religion ? Men 
mistook the passion of partisanship for the passion 
of righteousness. Not only did they refuse to hear 
two sides in religious matters, but they made it a 
crime so to do. They demanded that the state com- 
pel unquestioning acceptance of their religious creed. 
Shall we now insist that it Is a crime to differ from 
the political creed of the state? Can democracy 
achieve wisdom, maintain self-discipline sufficient to 
be Its own master and Its own guide. If the old pas- 
sions of rehglous differences are transferred to the 
political field? 

Any writer who has attempted to deal with the 
Issues discussed In this book knows the need of 
asking those questions. The first Impulse Is to re- 
fuse consideration for the revolutionary point of 
view. That point of view may be wrong, but behind 
It are forces which, though they may be rationally 
directed, cannot be suppressed. To throw some 
light on the nature of those forces Is the object of 
these pages. 



[xix] 



CONTENTS 

Introduction: A Plea for Facing the Facts . vii 

PART I 
THE CONCERN OF AMERICA 

CHAPTER I 
The Relation to the Peace Settlement ... 3 

The scant interest shown by the American people as a 
whole in the recent social movements of Europe. Yet 
the force of those movements will deeply influence the 
character of the peace settlement and the accomplishment 
of those political ends for which America entered the war. 
The fashion in which the social revolution is pushing the 
political and national issues into the background, and how 
the issue of a social system based on private property 
versus one based on communism is determining the align- 
ment of forces in Europe. For what kind of democracy 
will the world be made safe? 

CHAPTER II 
The Arrival of the Problem in America ... 36 

The growth of radically socializing policies throughout 
the world is not due to socialist propaganda, or the in- 
fluence of socialists, but to the war measures of govern- 
ments often anti-socialist in opinion and intention. Thus 
the introduction of extremely radical policies into America 
is not the work of the Socialist Party, or the I. W. W., 
but results from the actual measures of the government 
for war purposes. These revolutionary measures, which 
could never have been introduced oy Socialist influence, 
have actually been put into eifect, and the question which 
will shortly present itself to the American public is 
"Which of these measures shall be undone?" and out 
of that question may arise, with the changes wrought by 
war conditions, a re-alignment of political forces, as in 
England. The British problems are already here. 



PART II 

BRITISH LABOUR PROGRAMMES AND 
THE FORCES BEHIND THEM 

CHAPTER I 
What Is the British Labour Party? .... 53 

Historical outline of the Party; Its constituent elements. 
Its position in the ebb and flow of present party reorgan- 
ization in England. The general question of political 
action by trade-union forces in England. The gradual 
disappearance of " absolute " socialism in Europe, and the 
substitution for cast iron dogmas a general socializing 
tendency in radical political programmes. Socialism and 
Democracy ; " Socialism versus the State." French syn- 
dicalism, British guild socialism, Bolshevism, and im- 
possibilism in Labour politics. The English Parliamen- 
tary system and comparison with th« American Constitu- 
tion. 

CHAPTER II 
The Proposed Measures 92 

The outstanding measures proposed by the sub-commit- 
tee of the British Labour Party in their report on Recon- 
struction. The means to the end. Features iu a pro- 
gramme of the Lanshury-H erald group. 

CHAPTER ni 
Is It Possible? 105 

Most of the measures proposed are actually now in op- 
eration for the purposes of the war, and h£.ve given mate- 
rial results far in excess of anything which would have 
been thought possible in August, 1914. The feasibility of 
Collectivism, tested in material terms, has been demon- 
strated. What is now demanded is that that which can 
be done for purposes of war shall also be done for the 
purposes of peace. The political training and scientific 
spirit of the new Labour Party. 

CHAPTER IV 

The Ideal of a Real Democracy and "A New 
Social Order " 127 

What is the feeling behind the declaration that the old 
order is done with, and that there will be no attempts to 



patch it up, and that an entirely " New Social Order " 
must replace it? Mainly that mere improvement of the 
material condition of the workers, leaving unchanged their 
moral status as a servile class, will not suffice. The re- 
assertion of egalitarian ideas. The imponderabilia in the 
motive forces of Labour Politics. Why are some Social- 
ists lukewarm towards or hostile to the war? The emer- 
gence of reactionary forces in war time. State Socialism 
not synonymous with Freedom: nor with Peace. Will a 
more socialized order necessarily make for a warless 
world? The relation of Socialism to internationalism^ 

CHAPTER V 

Military Conscription and the Institution of 
Private Property 159 

The fashion in which the needs of war have prompted 
a reassertion of the absolute rights of the state over the 
person — his life and mind — is modifying age-long con- 
ceptions of private property. Confiscation, conscription 
of wealth and the Eighth Commandment. Not repudia- 
tion, but a progressive income tax. The virtual bank- 
ruptcy of some of the belligerent states and its effect on fu- 
ture legislation. Necessitas. . . . 

CHAPTER VI 
The Spirit of Adventure in Social Change . .178 

The end of the old fatalism which implies that we must 
" take the world as we find it," and that we cannot re- 
make it. Some of the results that we may expect from 
the cheapening of life, th€ contempt of danger, the re-cast- 
ing of moral standards, and the spirit of revolution which 
the war has produced. The " strenuous life " in times of 
peace, and its social and political implications. 

PART III 
THE DANGERS 

CHAPTER I 

A Society of Free Men or the Servile State? . 189 

The greater the degree of socialization, the more de- 
pendent does the individual become upon the community. 
Unless this increased power of the community is used with 



restraint and wisdom, the new order may be wrecked by 
the crushing of the individual personality on which in the 
long run society depends. A social order which comes into 
being as the result of war measures is likely to be strongly 
marked by coercive tendencies. If it is not to be ui truth 
the Servile State, the indulgence of present tendencies 
must be checked by a clear recognition of their danger. 
Do we love oppression and coercion for their own sake? 
What present methods might mean, if employed by a 
Labour government. 

CHAPTER II 
The Herd and Its Hatred of Freedom .... 236 

The deep-seated hatred of those who have the insuffer- 
able impudence to disagree with us is one of the strong- 
est and most constant motives in history, often ruthlessly 
over-riding economic and other considerations, yet sel- 
dom taken into account. The motive has strong biological 
justification, but like other instincts of self-preservation 
may destroy us if yielded to indiscriminately without fore- 
sight of consequences. How the social machinery of mod- 
ern society tends to develop this herd feeling. Two essays 
for war time: "The Problem of Northcliffe"; and " De 
Hasretico Comburiendo, or ' Now is not the time.' " 

CHAPTER III 
Why Freedom Matters 263 

Our age long failures to grasp the real justification of 
freedom: Society's need. The self-same debate in Ath- 
ens two thousand five hundred years ago. The oppres- 
sions from which the mass have suffered have always 
been imposed by themselves. The idea that a tiny mi- 
nority, by means of physical force, can impose tyranny 
upon the mass, is obviously an illusion. Tha. tyranny 
must be imposed by capturing the mind of the mass. The 
quality of any Society depends upon the ideas of the indi- 
viduals who compose it, and those ideas upon Freedom 
and independence of judgment. The Political Heretic as 
the Saviour of Society. 

APPENDICES 

Text of the Report of the British Labour Party 

ON Reconstruction 297 

Text OF " Lansbury-Herald " Proposal . . .315 



PART I 
THE CONCERN OF AMERICA 



THE BRITISH REVOLUTION 

AND 

THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

CHAPTER I 

THE RELATION TO THE PEACE SETTLEMENT 

The scant interest shown by the American people as a whole in 
the recent social movements of Europe. Yet the force of those move- 
ments will deeply influence the character of the peace settlement 
and the accomplishment of those political ends for which America 
entered the war. The fashion in which the social revolution is 
pushing the political and national issues into the Background, and 
how the issue of a social system based on private property versus 
one based on communism is determining the alignment of forces in 
Europe. For what kind of democracy will the world be made safe ? 

How much space have the great American daily 
papers devoted to the Report on Reconstruction 
adopted by the British Labour Party? Has even one 
at this moment of writing, six months after its publi- 
cation, reproduced it in full, or analyzed it with any 
care? Has it been noticed at all in the American 
Press outside of special radical weekly publications? 
However that may be, it is pretty certain that not 
one hundredth part of the space has been devoted 
to it that has been devoted to such world shaking 
questions as the retention of Dr. Muck as the con- 
ductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, or Mr. 

[3] 



Creel's remarks concerning certain Congressmen. 
Yet in the minds of very many who have followed 
most closely the social and political developments of 
recent years in Europe, this document may very well 
prove to be what it professes to be, the charter of an 
entirely new social order; the proclamation of a 
revolution. By " revolution " be it noted, is not 
meant machine guns at street corners, nor anything 
resembling a military movement against the govern- 
ment.^ The word is used in the sense in which we 
speak of the industrial revolution — the coming of 
" the New Social Order " as the Labour Party Com- 
mittee themselves term It. It is not likely to come 
by violence, but it will be none the less revolutionary 
— a " turn over " — for all that. For it will affect 

1 As long ago, however, as the summer of 1917 the London 
Times, through the articles of its " special commissioner," began 
to speak of "the ferment of Revolution." Its commissioner (Sep- 
tember 25) wrote: 

" There exists at the present moment a revolutionary movement 
in this country which has gathered considerable momentum; it has 
long passed the stage of mere talk, and has realized itself in 
formidable action. There has been no attack on the Throne, no 
rioting in the streets, no destruction of visible property; but changes 
have been already brought about which are thwarting the efforts 
of Government to conduct the war with efficiency, and if these 
changes go further they will bring the country into confusion." 

The paper comments editorially: 

" The facts set out in these articles are no news to the Govern- 
ment or to the official heads of trade unionism, but their cue has 
always been to turn a blind eye, and, when that is impossible, to 
minimize the extent of the mischief and soothe the public with 
' optimistic ' assurances, which the public are always ready to 
swallow. That policy is natural, and up to a point defensible; 
but when the result is a continued and rapid increase of the evil 
on lines that promise no decline but certain development into a 
national danger, then it is time to adopt a different policy. 

" The central fact is that behind the meaningless and stupid term 
'labour unrest' lies a conscious revolutionary movement which 
aims at the complete overthrow of the existing economic and social 
order, not in some uncertain future, but here and now." 

[4] 



our most fundamental conceptions, touching such 
things as the institution of private property, the real 
nature of democracy, the rights of the individual and 
the power of the community, — the character of hu- 
man society in fact. 

" The war of Nations," ^ writes Frederic Har- 
rison, " is being entangled with, is merging into, the 
war of Class : about sovereignty, ranks, upper and 
lower Orders; but essentially, between those who hold 
Capital and those who Work with their hands. Na- 
tional wars, as we see, unite men in nations: class 
wars suppress the spirit of nationality, for they her- 
ald what Socialists promise as the grander form of 
Patriotism, the brotherhood of labourers. At the 
opening of the great European War Democracy was 
appealed to, and nobly it answered the call in the 
name of the Nation. But now, in this fourth year 
of war, we see all over Europe how democratic pa- 
triotism is expanding into the new Industrial Order 
which dreamers for two generations have Imagined 
as the Social Revolution." 

That Social Revolution will determine the polit- 
ical issues. Yet its nature and underlying forces are 
left all but undiscussed and unrepresented in the 
American press. 

There are several causes contributing to that 
neglect. We get in the American press long quota- 
tions every day from the daily papers of Britain as 
representing " British " opinion. But for reasons 
of an economic order the British Labour Party, and 
the groups composing it, although they represent 

'^Fortnightly Revienv, Jan., 1918. 

[5] 



perhaps the majority of the British population, do 
not possess a single daily paper. It thus happens 
that day after day during serious crises, we get 
voluminous expressions of " British opinion " from 
which possibly the largest section of all is excluded; 

Let us note the relation of this Social Revolution 
of which Mr. Harrison speaks, to the accomphsh- 
ment of the specific objects for which America en- 
tered this war. 

What are those objects? 

The President has repeatedly, both explicitly and 
implicitly, emphasized this fact : The establishment 
of a new international order is not for America, as it 
is for the other belligerents, something over and 
above special national objects. It is in itself the ma- 
jor American purpose, since it is the condition sine 
qua non of the prevention of the particular abuses 
which caused her to enter the war; the condition of 
achieving any result whatsoever. Even though no 
League of Nations were established, France would 
secure the righting of the wrong of 1872 ; Italy would 
redeem her unredeemed fatherland, and so down the 
whole list of the European belligerents. But what 
would America get? Her belligerency on behalf of 
the freedom of future generations of Americans, the 
preservation of democracy in the world, is related in 
a more intimate way than in the case of her European 
associates to the ending of an international order 
based upon competitive militarism. 

A new international order as the outcome of the 
war might take one of three possible forms : 

(i) A close aUiance of the four chief allied 
[6] 



governments: America, Britain, France and 
Italy, imposing a general settlement arranged 
privately among themselves, that settlement 
covering such questions as the kind of govern- 
ment which shall be recognized (that is, permit- 
ted) not only in Germany but in Russia, Poland, 
Ukrainia, Roumania, Bohemia, Serbia, etc. 
Such an Alliance would be an organ of coercion 
for securing the observance of the settlement, 
territorial and other, which it might make, 
using perhaps its military forces in such cases as 
Russia, but more frequently its power through 
control of food, shipping and raw material. 

(2) A Sociahst International definitely 
aligned against the League of Governments just 
described. The International would stand for 
the Soviets, for complete industrial democracy 
in Russia or Germany, or anywhere else that 
such experiments might be tried. 

(3) A Liberal League of Nations of the 
Wilson type, embracing not only the four chief 
AUied belligerents but the lesser states, the 
enemy states, and the neutrals as well. Its 
main activities would be, not repressive and co- 
ercive, aimed at compelling observance of an 
imposed status quo, but legislative. It would 
aim not so much at enforcing peace through 
the power of a few great governments, as at 
making constitutional provision for changes in 
the conditions which lead to war, creating for 
that purpose democratic machinery in the shape 
of an international legislature as truly repre- 

[7] 



sentative as possible of the peoples. It 
would provide for change and development by 
constitutional means, removing the need for 
war as an instrument of change or growth. It 
would thus provide In the International field 
what every nation provides as a matter of course 
within its own borders. Its first task would be 
not so much that of policemen compelling ob- 
servance of ancient international laws, as of 
democratic law-makers devising better rules. 
The questions Involved In these political alterna- 
tives cannot be answered without raising the funda- 
mental issue of the Social Revolution. Let us note 
how the development of governmental policy with 
reference to a certain political decision Is now tend- 
ing to raise that Issue. 

After fairly definite declarations to the effect that 
there should be no military intervention In Russia for 
the purpose of Interfering with the Internal affairs of 
that country, we have intervened. The first justifica- 
tion was that the country was falling under the mili- 
tary domination of Germany. Russia's forces were 
aiding our enemy In war. But that enemy is now dis- 
armed. We still intervene. On what ground? It 
has not so far been stated. But there are several 
perfectly arguable grounds. It Is undeniable that 
the Russian Revolutionary government has robbed 
miUIons of honest Frenchmen of their savings. 
That money was not lent to Czardom for the pur- 
poses of oppression. With it, Russia has built rail- 
roads and docks — and steals them. More, the eco- 
nomic penetration of Russia by Individual Germans 

[8] 



may place it dangerously under German Influence. 
The possible creation of a new menace to western 
democracy may demand that that process of penetra- 
tion shall stop. Certain groups — monarchist, 
Cadet — which recently were turning to Germany 
for aid, are now believed to favour our intervention. 
It will, therefore, be far better for the future of de- 
mocracy — and Russian bonds — that the early 
steps of Russians in self-government and self-deter- 
mination should be guided by their elder brothers; 
the practical means to that end being the partition 
of the country between the great Allied powers for a 
prolonged military occupation. Japan, who has 
been to the forefront In the policy of intervention, 
will of course shoulder her part of the White Man's 
Burden in its latest form, and in fitting the Slav race 
for democracy upon Western models. 

That decision, if carried out, will of course neces- 
sarily mean that the future League of Nations will 
be of the Holy Alliance type. Just as the Congress 
of Peace which settled the last world war ended in a 
League of Nations (the phrase was current, by the 
way, at the Congress of Vienna) which decided to 
forbid experiments In political democracy as the 
enemy of public order (which In a sense they cer- 
tainly were) so the new Peace Congress may forbid 
experiments In new forms of democracy, based, as we 
regard It, upon theft, and threatening the peace and 
security of that form of political organization which 
we have developed during the nineteenth century. 
The Holy Alliance which followed the Congress of 
Vienna was initiated by a sincere, religious enthusi- 

[9] 



ast, for the declared purpose of maintaining world 
peace, which was presumed (rightly) to be incom- 
patible with political democracy as we now know it. 
The Peace of Vienna was broken, less by the dynasts 
who were honestly in favour of a peace which should 
crystallize the order in which they were the ruling 
element, than by revolting American colonies, pop- 
ular revolutions, and assertions of nationahty. 

But we know that that interpretation of " making 
the world safe for democracy " will not be accepted 
by great masses of the folk in Western Europe. 

In the pages that follow some attempt is made to 
show why so many among the European peoples have 
ceased to attach much value to mere political democ- 
racy — control of their political government and 
destiny — and, as already noted, are Insisting that 
democracy means the right to control their in- 
dustrial life and government, to determine their 
workaday conditions by control of the economic basis 
of the community's life — the means of production, 
distribution, exchange. This involves the right of 
the state to take private property and capital for 
social ends, as absolutely as it now, for mstance, 
takes the life of the worker for its military purposes. 
Soviet Russia, in the application of this principle to 
practice, has asserted the right to exclude from its 
government all those who do not subscribe to its com- 
munistic principles. Just as England refuses to ac- 
cord the vote to those who will not fight for the state 
(conscientious objectors to the conscription of life), 
so Russia refuses to give the vote to those who resist 
the conscription of their wealth. 



That interpretation of democracy we are for the 
time being resisting, and this issue has on both sides 
overridden the original causes of conflict. Note to 
what degree. The Nationalist parties in Russia, 
those whose sentiment of Slav national soHdarity 
were such as to throw the protection of Russia over 
small Slav states endangered by the aggression of 
Germany, are the very parties who, in the border 
states, were the first to call in German aid to repel 
rival Russian parties who would upset the existing 
economic order. As between the Russian Bolshevik 
and the enemy German bourgeois, they chose the 
German bourgeois. The " Whites " of Ukrainia, 
like those of Finland, very readily allied themselves 
with Germans to fight Russians. The son of Leo 
T-olstoy begins an article in an American paper with 
these words: "I shall be glad for Russia when 
the Germans take Petrograd. It w'ill finish the 
Bolsheviki." Professor Miliukoff himself went to 
Kieff to come to an alliance with the Germans. The 
parties whom we are now supporting in Ukraine and 
in Finland are those which have been notable for 
their readiness to co-operate with the Germans In 
resistance to the Russian Bolsheviks. But the most 
striking illustration of all is of course the clause in 
the armistice conditions which demands that the Ger- 
man troops shall remain in the border states " until 
the internal conditions permit of their withdrawal." 
Their withdrawal now would be the signal for Bol- 
shevik capture of power. As these lines are be- 
ing written the American newspapers contain dis- 
patches rejoicing at the defeat of Bolsheviks by 

[II] 



troops commanded by German officers. We are 
allied with Germans against Russians. The orig- 
inal alignment of forces by nations — Germany 
versus Russia — has disappeared and has been re- 
placed by an alignment based on class and party. 
To make the demonstration complete is the fact men- 
tioned in one of the dispatches that the Soviet troops 
are largely officered by German ex-prisoners — pri- 
vates made officers by the Russian Soviets. These 
Germans, leading Russians, are now fighting their 
own ex-officers leading Russians. We are In alli- 
ance with Russo-German bourgeois and imperialists 
against Russo-German republicans and Socialists. 

The situation may be unavoidable, and wise poli- 
tics. I am not discussing the merits of the thing, 
only calling attention to the facts, which we do not 
sufficiently face. 

The suppression of Soviet government in Russia 
and establishment of order will not be a simple mat- 
ter; obviously it will be extremely difficult. And we 
shall have to deal not only with Russia, but with con- 
flicts in most of the small independencies which we 
have created — In Poland, Ukralnia, Jugo-Slavla. 
Already Poland Is at war with Ukralnia, and Jugo- 
slavia In violent disagreement with Italy. And In 
addition to controlling these numerous small inde- 
pendencies there is the problem of controlling So- 
cialist Germany. 

The German problem has also entirely changed In 
character. It Is no longer a problem of suppressing 
autocratic militarism, but of dealing with an auto- 
cratic Socialism. Germany has omitted the phase of 

[12] 



political democracy in her development, and jumped 
in a day from political autocracy to what may well 
prove to be a proletarian dictatorship of socialist 
principles. Germany may well so develop as to 
become the natural ally of Soviet Russia. We face 
a Russo-German Socialist alliance. 

It may be part of the German evil which has cursed 
the world that the German people have shown 
three qualities in highly developed degree : discipline, 
pushed to the point of docility, in submission to the 
constituted order whatever it may happen to be (Hin- 
denburg seemed to obey a German Soviet as readily 
as, a week previously, he had obeyed his mediaeval 
emperor) ; cohesion as a racial and national group, 
and capacity for organization. 

We have thus a solid Germanic block soon to 
number a hundred million, influencing a Russian 
block as large, and thrust into the midst of smaller 
and often mutually antagonistic states. In fact, one 
result of the break-up of Russia and Austria may be 
to make Germany (plus German Austria) the most 
powerful racially-unified group on the Continent. 
More than one military critic has expressed the opin- 
ion that Germany will be relatively stronger after 
the war than she was before ! Such a Germany 
would be able to manipulate the mutual antagonisms 
of her lesser neighbours in order to secure for herself 
the aid of one against another. That game has been 
played endlessly in history. 

What then is the political outlook? 

Suppose we manage to repress Bolshevism in our 
states. It will be by means of increasing the central 

[13] 



authority and the repressive character of our govern- 
ments, making them military, " Prussian." That 
means bringing into power everywhere in the west- 
ern states those parties that are Nationalistic in tem- 
per and outlook. We need not stop now to examine 
why parties that support militarist and repressive 
forms of government should also be Nationalist, 
Chauvinist. It suffices for the moment that it hap- 
pens to be the case. Between Nationalism, Militar- 
ism and Chauvinism there is a close casual relation- 
shif). Note where the fact lands us. 

There seems a possibility that Germany may 
break into several states. As the result of what 
forces? Of the coming of Bolshevism to power in 
Berlin and other northern cities. But assume Bol- 
shevism is suppressed. It will be by virtue of the 
coming to power of a strong National government, 
resting on the appeal of the National tradition. 
And then the German solidarity — and German 
menace — will remain. If we have to deal with 
Bolshevism by repression exercised through strongly 
centralized nationalistic governments we have not 
destroyed the specific danger it was the object of the 
war to dispose of. 

A large number of lesser states endowed with mil- 
itary, Nationalistist and Chauvinist governments 
means the perpetuation of the old rivalries and an- 
tagonisms. What situation does that leave in 
Europe? 

It has taken four years of war fully to push home 
to our consciousness — if indeed it can be said to 

[14] 



have done it yet — the almost self-evident truth that 
in the case of a war fought by a large alliance made 
up of all sorts and conditions of nations, success de- 
pends, not alone upon the possession of ample mili- 
tary force by each separte state (although that is ab- 
solutely necessary) but also upon the capacity to com- 
bine those forces to a common purpose, to employ 
them to a common end. If incompatibility of aim 
sphts the Alliance, or even prevents complete co- 
operation, the very power created to give us victory 
may be used to make it impossible. 

Mere military preparedness could not improve the 
situation to our advantage. The defection of Rus- 
sia from the Alliance and her political collapse, 
would not have been prevented by the fact of pos- 
sessing more military power. That might have 
made the consequences worse. If, for instance, the 
stores of military material which were ready for 
shipment had actually reached Russia in 19 17, 
American troops might have been killed by Ameri- 
can guns and shells. (It may well now be happen- 
ing.) In the same way it will serve I'ittle purpose to 
resuscitate the military power of Russia, if her politi- 
cal development results in her becoming a future ally 
of Germany. 

The forces behind the military disasters we have 
actually had to face as the result of the Russian 
collapse, and the dangers we may have to face as the 
result of pro-Prussian development of Russian pol- 
icy, are moral, social, economic. Those forces will 
determine the policy which will direct the mihtary 

[15] 



power. It is not alone the gun which mutters but the 
direction in which it shoots. And that is determined 
by policy. 

It is of the utmost importance to get clearly in 
our minds the outstanding difference between our- 
selves and the enemy. During the war he managed 
to achieve unity of a kind by virtue of historical and 
geographical circumstances. His alliance was com- 
posed of a group of states geographically contiguous 
with one member of it so predominant in power — 
military, political and economic — as to be able to 
impose so long as the alliance lasted at least unity of 
policy and direction. Our alliance was made up of a 
much larger number of states, not grouped together, 
but scattered over the face of the world, sepa- 
rated by great differences of national character and 
interest, and not dominated by the preponderant 
power of one member able by simple virtue of that 
power, autocratically to impose a single policy and 
aim. And if we are to achieve a unification as ef- 
fective as that of the enemy it must be by virtue of 
voluntary co-operation — a democratic internation- 
alism. Such a process is much more difficult, and 
cumbrous than the autocratic method, and apt to be 
much less immediately efficient. But it is all that 
is left to us, and whatever its difficulty we must em- 
bark on it. It is our failure to do this in sufficient 
degree which in the past has given, and will in the 
future give, the enemy his one great chance of suc- 
cess.^ 

^Lord Robert Cecil, the British Under Secretary of State for 
Foreign AfEairs, in a public address said : " We have got to pool 

[i6] 



Now the prevailing idea seems to be that unity 
will be maintained if we don't speak rudely of one 
another or recriminate over reverses. But unity 
is not achieved merely by good intention. No one 
of the Allies wanted to quarrel with Russia, and we 
were very scrupulous early in the war about not say- 
ing rude things concerning the Czar. But we see 
now that we should have had a better chance of un- 
derstanding the Revolution, and of guiding its course, 
if we had reconciled ourselves to a few home truths 
about the Czarist regime. So with Italy. A little 
frank counsel about the conditions of the treaty of 
April, 19 1 5, might have very greatly accelerated the 
line taken three years later. No one wants to offend 
either Russia or Japan at this juncture. We have 
the best of feelings towards both. Yet a fatal dis- 
unity, resulting in a permanent Russo-German Alli- 
ance may come out of the best intentions; it may 
result equally from our action or our want of action 
in the matter of intervention. So with Anglo-Ameri- 
can relations today. How many Americans realize 
that just as Russian SociaHsm was unwittingly 

all our resources. ... In this and many other matters we are 
fighting under a certain disadvantage. Our enemies have been 
content to enslave themselves to the German general staff. That 
gives* them a certain unity of control, a certain perfection of ma- 
chinery, which it is difficult for us to imitate. For, after all, the 
essential part of our struggle is that we are free nations, that we 
claim the right to decide, each for ourselves, what is necessary in 
the interests of the general cause. ... I do not myself wish it 
otherwise. I am satisfied that with all its inconveniences it gives 
us a spiritual strength which ultimately will secure victory for us 
over the enemy. But if we are to succeed despite our freedom we 
must be prepared to scrap national prejudice, national sentiment, 
and even I would say, national interests. That is essential if we 
really propose to make the best use of the strength we have." 
(Reported in New York Times, Sept. 3, 1918.) 

[17] 



alienated by the Western democracies In 19 17, large 
sections of European Radicalism, particularly Brit- 
ish, French and Belgian, have come to regard Ameri- 
can organized labour with, to say the least, a certain 
coolness and that (as the American Delegation which 
visited the British Labour Leaders in May of this 
year admitted on their return) a very considerable 
gulf has revealed itself as existing between the or- 
ganized Labour forces of America and Western 
Europe. Certainly that was not intended. It is 
not by disregarding divergences of aim that they are 
reconciled. If it be true that Russia is deeply suspici- 
ous of Japan, we shall not dispel that suspicion or 
escape its consequences by pretending It does not ex- 
ist. Just In that way did our government deal with 
certain facts of the Russian situation before the 
Revolution. 

A month or so before the Czar was deposed a 
British government commission. Including promi- 
nent members of the government, was In Russia In- 
vestigating conditions. They came to the conclu- 
sion — and reported — that nothing In the way of 
a serious uprising was to be expected, a conclusion 
from which. It is rumoured, only one member of the 
party — a young and obscure attache — seems to 
have dissented. Members of the mission, rather 
ostentatiously, went out of their way to approve the 
Czarist regime. We now know indeed that the Rus- 
sian government itself did not believe in the pos- 
sibility of wide-spread action against it. This also 
is in keeping with precedent. The French King 

[18] 



wrote in his diary on the night of the fall of the 
Bastille: " Rien." Nothing had really happened 
in his opinion. And when the Russian revolution 
finally did come, the Western Allies adopted the gen- 
eral method of preventing contact with those ele- 
ments in their own states most sympathetic to it. 
If the Revolutionists desired to meet the Socialists 
of the more thorough-going type they were offered 
Lord Milner. Aggressive American Radicalism 
was represented by Mr. Elihu Root. And we 
seemed to imagine that this kind of policy would 
in some way attach the Revolutionary parties in Rus- 
sia to the general cause of the Alliance. When the 
Revolution began to follow the course that most 
such upheavals have followed, we merely shouted 
that the extremists were selling out to the Germans. 
Lenine and Trotsky were enemy agents. Possibly. 
In that case we should have examined more carefully 
the forces which they would be likely to use. We 
did not have the patience to examine those forces. 
In our attitude towards international socialism we 
seem to follow the famihar curve of conduct toward 
heretical theories or principles. First we deride 
them as silly or unpracticable, then we declare fehem 
to be dangerous, shameful, or immoral. Then we at- 
tempt suppression. That suppression renders vio- 
lent and anti-social, emotions which a little wisdom 
might have made socially useful and fertile. Finally, 
after sterile conflicts and much avoidable damage we 
pretend that we always more or less held these views, 
proceed to give some recognition to them and to or- 

[19] 



ganize them for our purposes. It is the story of all 
heresies from early Christianity to modern feminism. 
The part of wisdom is to see how we can accelerate 
the process, short-circuit it, and come as soon as 
possible to the stage of organization. 

The unity of our scattered democracies cannot be 
based upon the sheer suppression — or misrepre- 
sentation — of the moral forces represented in the 
social revolution. There is but one way to handle 
them : to try and understand them and to give them 
constitutionally organized expression, by deliberately 
endowing our international institutions with organs 
for such expression. Because of the very lack of 
docility in our democracies, the policy of repression 
as a means of insuring unity must fail. If we cannot 
allow Stockholm conferences of socialists then our 
official conferences must duly provide for the expres- 
sion of the opinion of all parties, just as our national 
legislatures do. 

The British Labour Party is relatively a vastly 
more powerful body today than were the revolution- 
ary parties of Russia in 1 9 1 6. It is in close co-opera- 
tion with hardly less powerful labour and socialist 
bodies in France and Italy. These inter-Allied 
forces stand in common for a certain programme. 
They desire to come into contact with American 
labour and socialist forces. And not only is every- 
thing done to prevent real contact between the radical 
elements in the various countries (which are not 
pro-German or anti-war elements, as the programme 
of the Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist Conference 
:n London proves) but we indulge in what is, in fact, 

[20] 



reciprocal misrepresentation and deception. The 
delegation expressly chosen by the Conference (of 
February 25th, 1918) representing the immense pre- 
ponderance of the labour and socialist parties in 
Britain, France, Belgium and Italy is discour- 
aged or prevented from visiting America. But 
there is sent to America, as representative of Brit- 
ish Labour, a delegation which the British Labour 
Party repudiates. There goes from America a dele- 
gation from which is carefully excluded just those 
elements in American radical opinion that favour the 
European Labour attitude. The attempt is thus 
made to keep from both European and American 
public opinion a knowledge of the real nature of the 
European movement — just as was done In the case 
of the Russian Revolution. American Labour as 
represented by the American Federation of Labour, 
is led to intervene in British politics by supporting 
one particular party in British Labour politics as 
against another — but to support the party which 
most certainly is not destined to come to power. 

We are creating, by such methods, just the kind 
of misunderstanding and conflict which detached the 
Russian democracy from the cause of the war. Thus 
we find the Chairman of the American Labour Mis- 
sion which visited England in May last, giving on 
his return, interviews to the Press, in which he is 
reported as saying: 

" There are in England, certain classes of people who 
term themselves ' leaders of labour ' who are, in reality, not 
working men, but members of a labour political party "... 

[21] 



[He referred, he said, to Mr. Arthur Henderson and his as- 
sociates]. "We had opportunities to speak to thousands of 
working men in shipyards, munition plants, and railroad 
shops. We found that in all cases the policy of the Ameri- 
can Federation of Labour, that no representative of Ameri- 
can labour should meet in conference with representative 
workers of enemy countries so long as the war lasts, was 
received with cheers and practically unanimous approval. 
. . . The labourers of Great Britain are organizing a new 
political party. A convention is scheduled for sometime in 
June and under the terms of the call none but workers will 
be permitted to be affiliated with this new body. The French 
workingmen are bothered, as are the British, by politicians 
connected with the Socialist party. The majority of the 
French Socialists are in accord with the policy of the Amer- 
ican Federation of Labour. . . ." 

The newspaper report adds : " The chairman of 
the Mission said he believed that many of the French 
agitators who bothered labour were tools of Ger- 
man propagandists, and that some had been dis- 
covered to be in the pay of the Germans." ^ 

1 Professor Arthur O. Lovejoy of Johns Hopkins University, who 
accompanied the mission, writes: "In one important particular, 
the activities of the American labour delegates in England and 
France are open to some legitimate criticism. Their tone and 
manner, or at least the tone and manner of their chairman, in 
dealing with those with whom they differed were often needlessly 
brusque, harsh and unconciliatory. The suaviter in modo is ap- 
parently not considered an essential in American trade union 
diplomacy. And they seemed to me in their public utterances 
to give too little specific emphasis to the more constructive parts 
of President Wilson's programme of war aims, to which, however, 
in general terms, they gave unqualified, support. Concerning the 
hope of preventing future wars and future acts of international 
injustice by the establishment of a genuine Society of Nations, the 
spokesmen abroad of the American Federation of Labor had ap- 
parently little to say. Yet this, surely, is the supreme hope and 
object of America in the war. It is also the only hope which can 
in the long run be relied upon to keep the labouring masses of 
the Allied countries steadfast through the immeasurable sacrifices 

[22] 



The meaning of the interview can hardly be mis- 
interpreted: British Labour is not represented by 
the British Labour Party, nor French Socialism by 
the party of which men like Albert Thomas were the 
leaders. This of course, is in accordance with the 
known views — many times expressed — of Mr. 
Gompers, the President of the American Federation 
of Labour who nominated the Mission. 

Now the American Labour Leaders may have, 
as the result of three weeks passed in England, a 
very penetrating vision into the future of British 
politics. Their judgment as to which party in Brit- 
ish Labour politics is likely to come to power may 
be very much better than that of men like Arthur 
Henderson who have passed a long life in British 
Labour organization, and the British Parliament, and 
have been members of a British War Cabinet. But 
imagine for the sake of argument that these Ameri- 
can Labour representatives, standing, in the eyes of 

which the war imposes upon them. It is not by an endless reitera- 
tion of the phrases ' German autocracy ' and ' making the world 
safe for democracy' that the plain man can be steeled to endure 
all things for the sake of defeating the German military power. 
His very hatred and weariness of the war must be made into 
motives for continuing it until mankind can win adequate guar- 
anties against the recurrence of these abominations. ' Never 
again ! ' is the battle cry that touches most deeply the general 
heart. And such a cry, while it directs attention to the urgent 
political task of organizing an effective League of Nations — and 
of beginning its organization woou — does not tend to direct at- 
tention from the hard military necessities of the moment. For 
there is no argument easier to make clear to the man of plain 
common sense than that which shows it to be the first pre-condition 
to the establishment of a secure, just and peaceful international 
order, that the arch-enemies of such an order shall be defeated, 
discredited by disaster, and rendered powerless to convert human 
society a second time into the thing of horror that it now is." — 
New Republic, June 15, 1918. 

[23] 



the British working classes for the American govern- 
ment, have misjudged forces and that in the near 
future some of the men so bluntly criticized by the 
Chairman of the American Mission as politicians and 
theorists become once more (what they were just re- 
cently) members or supporters of the British govern- 
ment, and perhaps this time, its predominant ele- 
ment. 

And imagine, on the other hand, a situation in 
which that party in British Labour politics, particu- 
larly lauded by the American mission, are the de- 
feated party, in opposition to the British government. 
It would hardly make for the solidarity of the Anglo- 
American democracy. 

It is not here a mere question of whether British 
and French Socialists shall confer with German So- 
cialists, directly in a Stockholm Conference, or do so 
through a Swedish or Dutch Socialist. An Ameri- 
can commentator puts it in these terms : 

" The British Labour Party, in their magnani- 
mous effort to rise to the challenge of the new world, 
not unreasonably counted upon the sympathetic un- 
derstanding and encouragement of the organized 
labour movement of democratic America. But their 
hopes In this quarter have been disappointed. Their 
programme was implicitly repudiated by the Thirty- 
eighth Annual Convention of the American Federa- 
tion of Labour which adjourned in St. Paul last week. 
Its authors were denounced as theorists and poli- 
ticians, more interested in maintaining their political 
positions than in solving trade union problems. The 
Convention decided to adhere to its traditional al- 

[24] 



legiance to pure and simple trade unionism on the 
apparent theory that the interests of organized la- 
bour are essentially distinct from the larger demo- 
cratic interests of the nation, and that the responsi- 
bility of American labour leaders properly begins 
and ends with the vested interests of the present and 
prospective dues-paying membership of the trade 
unions. If this theory were sound, if the interests of 
labour were separate and distinct from the larger in- 
terests of our democracy, the decisions of the Ameri- 
can Federation would be nobody's legitimate con- 
cern but Its own. But the theory is not sound. If 
the new world that is to follow in the wake of the 
war Is to be a democratic world, it is inevitable that 
the labour movement should be at its very heart and 
driving centre. If the leadership of the labour 
movement Is caste-bound and untouched by the 
larger democratic idealism that Is stirring in the 
world today. It will be a drag upon democracy and 
an effective ally of the forces of Tory reaction," ^ 

Speaking of recent tendencies in the elections of 
officials In the American Federation of Labour, the 
same paper declares that: 

" If the election of these labour Tories means any- 
thing It means that the policy of pure and simple 
trade unionism Is rapidly going to seed. Worse 
than this. It means that at the end of the war, when 
the support of the radical minority will in all like- 
lihood be withdrawn from Mr. Gompers, not the 
earnest and sincere conservatives who under Mr. 
Gompers' able leadership have built up the American 

1 The Neio Republic. 

[25] 



trade union movement, but the office-seeking labour 
politicians, men without idealism or social vision of 
any kind, will be in the ascendant. The prospect of 
this possibility is a matter of grave and legitimate 
concern, not only to the dues-paying membership of 
the Federation, but equally to all forward-looking 
and sincere democrats. By standing pat on their out- 
worn policy of pure and simple trade unionism the 
present leaders of American labour are not only 
jeopardizing their leadership within the organized 
labour movement, but are also forswearing that 
larger leadership to which the new world beyond the 
war is calling them." 

The matter goes very much deeper than differences 
of this kind. The Radical of the Allied Democra- 
cies has come to the conclusion that the changing of 
the existing social system is part of the object of the 
war itself; that a change in the status of the French 
and British peoples is as much a " war aim" as a 
change in the status of the Alsatians, Czecho-Slovaks 
or Dalmatians, and that that part of the settlement 
will greatly affect the future alignment of the States 
and peoples. This aim was not. It is true, among 
the original objects of the war, but It is now recog- 
nized that it has become the Indispensable condition 
of the complete achievement of the original objects : 
real freedom and lasting peace. 

A popular, possibly preponderant, American view 
of the scope and objects of the war, is that when the 
kaiser has been " canned " and Germany thoroughly 
licked, we shall all go back to the old world which 
we knew roughly In 19 14. It is an erroneous and 

[26] 



na'ive conception. The European is fully aware 
that if the war is to give results commensurate with 
the price that has been paid for it, it must result in a 
great deal more than the " canning of the Kaiser," 
and the licking of Germany. We might secure those 
things and yet have failed utterly to make the world 
safe for democracy, or our children secure from war 
and military tyranny. The Western Democracies 
of Europe know too well how fatuous is the op- 
timism which would regard the defeat of Germany 
as synonymous with a free and warless World. 

" War," writes Mr. Lowes Dickinson, " pro- 
ceeds from wrong ideas and wrong policies; in these 
ideas and policies all nations have been implicated; 
and this war will have been fought in vain unless it 
leads to a change of attitude in all governments and 
all peoples. This change, I agree, is most required 
in Germany, and may be most difficult to effect there. 
But there are, in all countries, traditions, prejudices, 
and illusions making for war." And it is these that 
must be destroyed. 

These passions and illusions have their roots pene- 
trating deeply into the soil of an old social system. 
So long as that system remains as we have known it 
in Europe, dominated by the privileged position of 
a small economic autocracy possessing an influence 
and authority, which cause it to nurse pride of place, 
instincts of mastery, belief in force and successful 
rivalry — so long as this remains, the British democ- 
racy have come to feel, war will always threaten 
us. Vaguely and dimly It is being increasingly real- 
ized that many of the qualities developed by the old 

[27] 



competitive social system render war ultimately in- 
evitable. " Our Institutions rest upon injustice and 
authority: it is only by closing our hearts against 
sympathy and our minds against truth that we can 
endure the oppression and unfairness by which we 
profit." ^ No secure world can be built on such 
foundations, however Germany be defeated. 

The supreme paradox of our time Is that this war 
fought for the purpose of giving us secure democ- 
racy and permanent peace, has developed forces 
which endanger those things, and which, unless rad- 
ically dealt with might well destroy them. If our 
economic system Is to be based largely upon the com- 
petitive scramble for profits; our states to be under 
the Influence of huge industrial and financial cor- 
porations seeking profits through foreign investment 
and the exploitation of foreign undeveloped terri- 
tory; if these corporations are to be grouped into a 
series of separate national organizations, drifting, 
through lack of agreement Into competition the one 
with the other ; if the individual self-assertion that is 
a necessary part of success in such an order is to be 
regarded as the prime social virtue, and if, together 
with all this, there are to be rival military organiza- 
tions on a vast scale — then further collective homi- 
cide is a certainty. 

And forces rooted In the old social and economic 
system are already pushing us in that direction. 
Protectionist schemes, embodied In grandiose plans 
of a closed empire, or Imperial preference, and the 
State exploitation of the raw material of the de- 

^Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight. 
[28] 



pendencies, have already won great favour. With 
them are associated schemes of more complete mili- 
tarization than in the past. Already, both in Eng- 
land and the United States, we have demands for 
the introduction of a permanent system of compul- 
sory and universal military training, the advocacy of 
which is already accompanied with a disparagement 
of the very ideals of internationalism which both 
America and England proclaimed as their chief aim 
when they first entered the war. 

In so far as this is a war for the destruction of 
militarism, it must be a war for the destruction of 
that part of the old social system in which militar- 
ism inheres. The very first paragraphs of the British 
Labour Party Report on Reconstruction makes this 
evident. 

" The view of the Labour Party," says this report, 
" is that what has to be reconstructed after the war 
is not this or that Government Department, or this 
or that piece of social.machinery; but, so far as Brit- 
ain is concerned, society itself. The individual 
worker, or for that matter the individual statesman, 
immersed in daily routine — like the individual sol- 
dier in a battle — easily fails to understand the mag- 
nitude and far-reaching importance of what is taking 
place around him. How does it fit together as a 
whole? How does it look from a distance? 
Count Okuma, one of the oldest, most experienced 
and ablest of the statesmen of Japan, watching the 
present conflict from the other side of the globe, 
declares it to bq nothing less than' the death of Euro- 
pean civilization. Just as in the past the civilizations 

[29] 



of Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, and the great 
Roman Empire have been successively destroyed, so, 
in the judgment of this detached observer, the civil- 
ization of all Europe is even now receiving its death- 
blow. We of the Labour Party can so far agree in 
this estimate as to recognize, in the present world 
catastrophe, if not the death in Europe of civiliza- 
tion itself, at any rate the culmination and collapse 
of a distinctive industrial civilization, which the 
workers will not seek to reconstruct. At such times 
of crisis it is easier to slip into ruin than to progress 
into higher forms of organization." That is the 
problem as it presents itself to the Labour Party to- 
day. 

" What this war is consuming is not merely 
the security, the homes, the livelihood and the 
lives of millions of innocent families, and an 
enormous proportion of all the accumulated 
wealth of the world, but also the very basis of 
the peculiar social order in which it has arisen. 
The individualist system of capitalist produc- 
tion, based on the private ownership and com- 
petitive administration of land and capital, with 
Its reckless 'profiteering' and wage-slavery; 
with its glorification of the unhampered struggle 
for the means of life and its hypocritical pre- 
tence of the ' survival of the fittest ' ; with the 
monstrous inequality of circumstances which It 
produces and the degradation and brutalization, 
both moral and spiritual, resulting therefrom, 
may, we hope, indeed have received a death- 
blow. With It must go the political system and 
[30] 



Ideas in which It naturally found expression. 
We of the Labour Party, whether In opposition 
or In due time called upon to form an Admin- 
istration, will certainly lend no hand to its re- 
vival. On the contrary, we shall do our utmost 
to see that It is burled with the millions whom 
it has done to death. If we In Britain are to 
escape from the decay of civilization Itself, 
which the Japanese statesman foresees, we must 
ensure that what Is presently to be built up Is a 
new social order, based not on fighting, but on 
fraternity — not on the competitive struggle 
for the means of bare life, but on a deliberately 
planned co-operation in production and distri- 
bution for the benefit of all who participate by 
hand or by brain — not on the utmost possible 
inequality of riches, but on a systematic ap- 
proach towards a healthy equality of material 
circumstances for every person born into the 
world — not on an enforced dominion over sub- 
ject races, subject Colonies, subject classes or 
a subject sex, but, in industry as well as In gov- 
ernment, on that equal freedom, that general 
consciousness of consent, and that widest pos- 
sible participation in power, both economic and 
pohtical, which Is characteristic of democracy." 

It is realized that this new world will not come of 
itself; that the democracies of Europe will have to 
fight for It against powerfully entrenched interests. 
Where will the American democracy stand In that 
fight? Will It join hands with the European de- 

[31] 



mocracles In giving battle to the forces of the old 
order, or will it, through ignorance, or the blindness 
of war emotions, compound with these forces? 

We must face the fact that there is a subtle yet 
deep division between the post-war psychology of the 
American and European peoples, due in part at least 
to the differing degrees of their sacrifice. 

Mrs. Margaret Deland, writing from France of 
those who have " opened their windows towards the 
East," says: 

" Their ' state of mind ' bids them look beyond the 
gathering darkness toward a Dawn. But they do not deny 
the terrors of the dark. During the hours before day- 
break may come — God knows what ! But whatever comes, 
it will be part of a process which will bring about an 
adjustment of the social order. It is probable, they say, 
that Gaston, with his hideous little gesture, will have a hand 
in it. This is their hope — a new Heaven and a new Earth ; 
Chaos dragged from the throat of Civilization; our code of 
morals saved from the assault of an efficiency which would 
reinforce itself by polygamy; the Idealism of Jesus preserved 
for our children's children! All this through Gaston's sur- 
gery. He accomplished, they say, a good deal in 1789. 
' But that which is coming,' said a Frenchman smiling, ' will 
be, for thoroughness, to 1789, as a Sunday picnic, as you call 
it.' Another of the Intellectuals put it in a way which 
would, I think, have appealed to Gaston: 

" ' It will come,' said he, ' the new world! But first will 
come the world revolution. It has already begun in Russia. 
After the Peace, Germany will explode, then England, then 
France, and then you people — with your imitation Democ- 
racy!'" 

Perhaps the French leaning to the dramatic has 
a little to do with this. It is not necessary to 

l32] 



imagine a duplication of the Russian phantasmagoria 
in the Western Democracies. The point that con- 
cerns us is that this deep moral disturbance to which 
so many witnesses testify, will profoundly affect the 
character of the world after the war, its social com- 
position, as well as the changes on the map. If we 
would realize whither we are tending we must enter 
with some understanding into the feeling of those 
who have suffered. If, as we proclaim so often, 
the fact of war, and the consecration of the youth of 
the world to death — to suffering it and to inflicting 
it — is certain to bring in its train a great moral 
revolution, that revolution must deeply affect the 
Reconstruction, the life that is to come after the 
war. If our easy generalizations on the moral im- 
plications of the soldier's life have any value at all, 
then that reconstruction will be the work of a trans- 
formed generation of men. 

This relation of the temper created by the long 
years of war to the problems of the reconstruction, 
as well as the civilian refusal or failure to face it, 
is sketched with bitter pessimism by an English of- 
ficer. 

" It is very nice to be home again. Yet am I at home? 
One sometimes doubts it. There are occasions when I feel 
like a visitor among strangers whose intentions are kindly, but 
whose modes of thought I neither altogether understand nor 
altogether approve. You speak lightly, you assume that we 
shall speak lightly of things, emotions, states of mind, human 
relationships, and affairs which are to us solemn or terrible. 

'* I cannot dismiss as trivial the picture which you make 
to yourselves of war and the mood in which you contem- 
plate that work of art. They are an index of the temper 

[33] 



in which you will approach the problems of peace. You are 
anxious to have a truthful account of the life of a soldier 
at the front. You would wish to enter, as far as human 
beings can enter, into his internal life, to know how he re- 
gards the tasks imposed upon him, how he conceives his 
relation to the enemy and to yourselves, from what sources 
he derives encouragement and comfort. You would wish 
to know these things; we should wish you to know them. 
Yet between you and us there hangs a veil. It is mainly 
of your own unconscious creation. It is not a negative, but 
a positive thing. It is not intellectual, it is moral. It is 
not ignorance, it is falsehood. I read your papers and 
listen to your conversation, and I see clearly that you have 
chosen to make to yourselves an image of war, not as it is, 
but of a kind which, being picturesque, flatters your appetite 
for novelty, for excitement, for easy admiration without 
troubling you with masterful emotions. You have chosen, I 
say, to make an image, because you do not like, or cannot 
bear the truth; because j^ou are afraid of what may happen 
to your souls if you expose them to the inconsistencies and 
contradictions, the doubts and bewilderments, which lie be- 
neath the surface of things. You are not deceived as to the 
facts; for facts of this order are not worth official lying. 
You are deceived as to the Fact. 

" Perhaps I do you an injustice. But that intimation does 
seem to me to peep through some of your respectable para- 
graphs. As I read them, I reflect upon the friends who, 
after suffering various degrees of torture, died in the illusion 
that war was not the last word of Christian wisdom. And 
I have a sensation as of pointed ears and hairy paws and a 
hideous ape-face grinning into mine — sin upon sin, misery 
upon misery, to the end of the world. 

" O gentle public, — for you were once gentle and may 
be so again, — put all these delusions from your mind. The 
reality is horrible, but it is not so horrible as the grimacing 
phantom which you have imagined. Your soldiers are 
neither so foolish, nor so brave, nor so wicked, as the me- 
chanical dolls who grin and kill and grin in the columns of 

[34] 



your newspapers. The war ... is a burden they carry 
with aching bones, hating it, hoping dimly that, by shoulder- 
ing it now, they will save others from it in the future. They 
carry their burden with little help from you. For an army 
does not live by munitions alone, but also by fellowship in a 
moral idea or purpose. And that you cannot give us." 

That was addressed to the English public in the 
spring of 19 17. Perhaps the last eighteen months 
have narrowed a little in England that gulf between 
the army and the civil public about which he wrote. 

It is true, of course, that some of the moral crises 
of Europe will not be duplicated in America. It 
is quite unlikely that Americans will ever be called 
upon to face the degree of sacrifice that has been de- 
manded of France, of Belgium, and even of Eng- 
land; and unlikely, In consequence, that a certain 
group of moral forces will operate in this country 
as they have operated In Europe. But many cir- 
cumstances of war time which have played so large a 
part In the production of the British Labour Party 
and Its programme are the circumstances of Amer- 
ica ; the very war measures which have given rise to 
the Labour Programme, are being enacted in this 
country ; the very problems which it attempts to solve 
are arising here; the very selfsame questions which 
face the English electorate will sooner or later, be- 
cause of steps already taken by the American gov- 
ernment. Inevitably be presented to the American 
electorate. Possibly that electorate is not yet po- 
litically conscious in sufficient degree to realize the 
issue. In that case the conflict will be deferred. 
But the Issue will remain. 

[35] 



CHAPTER II 

THE ARRIVAL OF THE PROBLEM IN AMERICA 

The growth of radically socializing policies throughout the 
world is not due to socialist propaganda, or the influence of 
socialists, but to the war measures of governments often anti- 
socialist in opinion and intention. Thus the introduction of 
extremely radical policies into America is not the work of the 
Socialist Party, or the I. W. W. but results from the actual 
measures of the government for war purposes. These revo- 
lutionary measures, which could never have been introduced 
by Socialist influence, have actually been put into effect, and 
the question which will shortly present itself to the American 
public is " Which of these measures shall be undone? " and 
out of that question may arise, with the changes wrought 
by war conditions, a re-alignment of political forces, as in 
England. The British problems are already here. 

The following is from a long article running to 
several columns which appears in The New York 
Times: ^ 

It seems a profound thing to say that at the close of the 
war we shall not go back to old conditions; that all of our 
time-honoured institutions have been shaken up; that we are 
going forward to revolutionary conditions; that labour, 
which has been " pressed down," is going to come into its 
own — in fact, is going to control our industrial institutions ; 
and that the " brotherhood of man " and the " democratiza- 
tion of industry " are going to be realized. . . . 

1 June 2, 1918. 

[36] 



Just what is it that labour is likely to demand at the close 
of the war that it is not demanding now and did not demand 
before the war? What part of labour has ideas at all in 
common with the American Bolsheviki ? . . . 

It goes without saying that after the war, as now, the 
I. W. W. and Socialist Party will be urging their respective 
philosophies — for it is hardly conceivable that these two 
groups can demand any more after the war than they are 
demanding now. . . . 

And also, I feel sure that the real labour movement of the 
country, consisting of the American Federation of Labour 
and the Railway Brotherhoods . . . will not be demanding 
anything different from what it is demanding today, viz: 
better wages, shorter hours, more humane working and living 
conditions, and the right to organize the workers and be 
heard collectively. While it is true that there is a small 
percentage, less than lo per cent, of these trade unionists 
who are members of the Socialist and I. W. W. movements, 
the 90 per cent, have passed on all the theories of these revo- 
lutionary movements and have rejected them. . . . 

A joint committee . . . composed of an equal number of 
representatives of the American Federation of Labour, repre- 
senting 135 national crafts, and of the National Industrial 
Conference Board, made up of fifteen national employers' or- 
ganizations, whose members employ millions of men . . . has 
unanimously issued a programme that is in effect a crushing 
blow to the Hillquits, the Hay woods, the Bergers, the Emma 
Goldmans, the revolutionary preachers and college professors, 
the New Republic and the Survey editors, and all other 
Arthur Hendersons and Sidney Webbs of this country. . . . 

Changes after the war? Yes! A better and higher civi- 
lization? Yes! Socialism, I. W. W., Bolshevism, anarchy? 
No ! That is my firm conviction. 

The writer is Mr. Ralph M. Easley, the Chairman 
of the Executive Council of the National Civic Fed- 
eration, and, consequently an authority of weight, 

[37] 



whose opinion is likely to be a representative one in 
the world of American industry. He expresses what 
is very probably a wide-spread view in this country. 

It will be noted that Mr. Easley ventures into 
prophecy. The present writer will not follow him 
into that region. The object of these pages is to 
call attention to actual events ; to forces brought into 
being by the war, and to their influence and tendency, 
not as the basis for " prophecy " or as matters of 
mere academic interest, but for the bearing that they 
have upon certain definite decisions that Americans 
will shortly be called upon to make, answers to ques- 
tions which cannot be shunned or avoided, answers 
which will determine in large part the character of 
future Am-crican society. 

The article from which the quotations given at 
the head of this chapter are taken, goes into figures 
to show how small numerically has been the propor- 
tion of Socialists and Radicals in the American la- 
bour movements of the past, and implies that the de- 
mands of " the real labour movement " will be of the 
same character after the war that they have been 
in the past, because American labour as a whole can 
be reckoned as immune from the blandishments of 
Sociahsts, I.W.W.'s, " Arthur Hendersons and 
Sidney Webbs " — which may well be the case. 

Emphasis on such a point would indicate that Mr. 
Easley has altogether failed to take cognizance of 
the forces which have brought into politics the Col- 
lectivist programmes of Europe. The growth of 
radically socializing policies throughout the world 
is not due mainly to socialist propaganda or the influ- 

[38] 



ence of Socialists, but to the war-measures of govern- 
ments, often anti-socialist in opinion and intention. 

The main factors of change In America are most 
unlikely to be Socialist or I.W.W. doctrines or 
propaganda. At best these last would merely be 
the expression of deeper and very different forces 
— effects rather than causes. Changes such as those 
which have already come in England, and the tenden- 
cies expressed In the programme of the Labour Party, 
are in no direct sense the result of Socialist advocacy, 
or the influence of the relatively tiny Socialist groups 
in English Labour. The strength of this new move- 
ment is due to the unintended momentum of events; 
a change made for one definite purpose is found to 
necessitate other changes and those other further 
ones, until the nation is carried far beyond its original 
purpose. It is the case of the mountain climber 
whose foot releases one pebble, which releases a 
boulder which releases others, and brings about an 
avalanche, carrying away half the mountain side. 

The American government, in taking over the 
control of the railroads, had in mind simply and 
purely a war need. So with the building of ships 
in vast numbers; with the control of the distribution 
of coal, and the fixing of its price ; with the price fix- 
ing of other commodities, and with such measures as 
an Income tax that goes as high as fifty per cent. But 
though these are war measures, can anyone doubt 
that the question as to what is to be done with the 
merchant ships built by the government in such 
quantity as to make this country the greatest ocean 
carrier In the world, the future scope of the income 

[39] 



tax and the public control of coal prices ■ — that such 
questions will raise problems that will change the 
whole character of political programmes in the fu- 
ture, and that " socialistic " demands will occupy in 
that future a place very different to that which they 
have occupied in the past? 

Keeping this not very elusive fact in mind, the 
reader will find it perhaps a little difficult to credit 
the fact that in forecasting the nature of the demands 
to be made by American labour after the war, and 
the circumstances that will bear upon it, Mr. Easley 
has not one word to say about such things as the fu- 
ture of the railroads. Not one word. Presumably 
the question of whether the roads shall return to 
private ownership or not, will not particularly con- 
cern between two and three million railway work- 
ers; the powerful farmers' Leagues, non-partisan 
and others, nor their political affiliations, nor the 
programmes of the political parties of the future. 

I have said that the measures prompted by the 
needs of war have already brought into being in 
America certain forces or tendencies which will have 
the very greatest bearing upon definite decisions 
that Americans will shortly be called upon to make, 
answers to questions which cannot be shunned or 
avoided. Those questions include the following: 

(i) Shall the railroads, telegraphs and 
canals be returned to private ownership and 
control, or retained by the government? Shall 
the ships now being manufactured by the gov- 
ernment become private property and the in- 
struments of private profit-making, or be re- 
[40] 



tained as a commercial enterprise of the nation? 

(2) Shall government control of the distri- 
bution of coal and the fixing of its price, to- 
gether with a measure of control and price fix- 
ing in such things as wheat and certain raw ma- 
terials be retained, or relinquished? 

(3) Shall war time government insurance 
be continued and carried over from military to 
civilian occupations? Shall insurance in fact, 
be nationalized? 

(4) What shall be the method of paying the 
cost of the war? Shall the income and excess 
profit tax be retained and extended for that pur- 
pose? 

(5) In the future use of ships, control of 
raw material, and the use of political power in 
undeveloped countries, shall American policy 
be protectionist, and nationalist, looking to the 
special advantage of American commercial con- 
cerns, or shall it aim at establishing equality of 
economic opportunity among the community of 
nations? 

(6) Shall conscription be retained and the 
country look for its future security to large naval 
and military forces, supporting a policy under 
purely national control; or to smaller forces 
making part of those of a Society of Nations 
supporting a policy in some measure under in- 
ternational control? 

The more that these questions are examined, the 
more will it be realized that they are very closely 
inter-related; that wise decision of any one involves 

[41] 



some degree of consideration of all the others; and 
that the answers given will determine the economic, 
social and political future in America. 

I will anticipate at this point in some degree, and 
ask the reader to consider, in the light of these 
questions shortly to be presented to the American 
electorate, the proposals which constitute the es- 
sence of the British Labour Party Programme; and 
beg him to ask himself whether, just because those 
questions will arise, it is not inevitable that a na- 
tional movement in America should sooner or later 
base its demands upon a practically similar platform, 
and whether such a platform would not gather to 
itself forces which are at bottom as strong in Ameri- 
can as they are in British life. 

The definite measures of the British programme 
can be summarized thus : 

The immediate national ownership of rail- 
ways, canals, lines of steamships, mines and the 
production of electrical power; a united na- 
tional service of communication and transport 
with a steadily increasing participation of the 
organized workers In the management both cen- 
tral and local; the whole business of the retail 
distribution of household coal being undertaken 
as a local public service by the elected municipal 
or county councils ; prices to be stabilized as 
much as they are in the case of railroad fares. 

Expropriation of profit-making Industrial In- 
surance companies. 

The present system of the centralized pur- 
chase of raw material and of " rationing " by 
[42] 



joint committees of the trades concerned; of 
the present fixing, for standardized products, 
of maximum prices at the factory, at the ware- 
house of the wholesale trader and in the retail 
shop, to be retained. 

For raising the greater part of the revenue 
required, the Party demands the direct taxation 
of incomes above the necessary cost of family 
maintenance ; and, for the requisite effort to pay 
off the national debt, the direct taxation of pri- 
vate fortunes both during life and at death. . . . 
The income tax on large incomes to rise to six- 
teen and even nineteen shillings in the pound, 
(that is to say from eighty to ninety-five cents 
on the dollar) . . . The Labour Party stands 
for special capital levy to pay off, if not the 
whole, a very substantial part of the entire na- 
tional debt. 
That is indeed an extremely radical programme, 
and represents a most thorough-going collectivism. 
But when we remember that the American people are 
already in collective control of their railroads and 
telegraphs ; owners of what may shortly be the larg- 
est mercantile fleet under one flag; control the dis- 
tribution of coal and other necessaries, and fix their 
prices, are associated in the largest insurance opera- 
tions ever undertaken, have put into operation an 
income tax rising already to over fifty per cent, in 
the case of large incomes; and when we remember 
that America's war effort is not yet at an end; that 
problems of demobilization and reconstruction will 
occupy the country certainly for several years after 

[43] 



the close of the war, and that young men who have 
been for several years in contact with European con- 
ditions will form an influential part of the electorate, 
it is obvious that there is no inherent impossibility 
in America's duplicating broadly the experience of 
Great Britain. 

One point particularly should be clarified: We 
are dealing here, not with rival prophecies, with an 
academic speculation as to " what will take place," 
as we might speculate whether it will be a wet or 
dry summer, but with the very practical question 
of what we are going to do in a matter in which 
we must do either one thing or the other. The 
question which Americans have to answer is not 
"What do you think will happen?" but "What 
are you going to make happen? What are you go- 
ing to DO? Are you going to keep the ships or sell 
them? Return the roads or retain them? " Either 
Involves far reaching consequences. We are faced, 
not with the question of choosing between rival dog- 
mas, but of deciding between alternative courses of 
action. 

Moreover the decisions will be forced upon us 
however much we might wish to avoid them. The 
greatest obstacle of the social innovater or reformer 
usually is inertia. There has been a movement, for 
Instance, for years in America for the nationalization 
of the railroads. The promoters of that idea might 
have agitated for generations and failed to get suf- 
ficient momentum behind their movement to over- 
come the inertia of the established and familiar. 
But the step of temporary nationalization In America 

[44] 



as In England, was taken over night. The body is 
now in motion. To " leave it alone " means leav- 
ing it, not at rest, but unguided. The decision to 
make no change, now means accepting enormous 
changes. This is the kind of problem that cannot 
be solved by leaving it alone; we cannot escape the 
decision.^ 

And the decisions when they come must be na- 
tional, not state or local. Action, whatever it is, 
will have to be taken by the Federal Government. 
The national parties must therefore concern them- 
selves with them. And that itself will involve a 
revolutionary change. It will involve in some de- 
gree a change in American character, the temper of 
American politics. 

Heretofore a movement like Socialism has been 
alien in America; an importation. The passion of 
political discussion which has characterized the po- 
litical history of some European countries will no 
longer be so foreign to American soil. 

For the first time since the civil war, political prin- 
ciples of fundamental import will be presented to 
the American democracy. 

In passing upon the question as to whether the 
government shall retain or return the roads, hand 
over the ships to private ownership or not, abandon 

^ It is true that the law calls for the return of the railroads 
automatically eighteen months after the cessation of the war. But 
the conditions of that return — rolling stock, common use of ter- 
minals — will raise questions involving the whole problem of 
nationalization. Mr. McAdoo has recently announced that the Gov- 
ernment is studying a great national plan for the electrification of 
all the American railroads: the supply of power from Federal 
hydro-electric stations. It is a further link in the chain of nation- 
alization. 

[45] 



the coal control, or not, retain the Income tax, and 
extend it as the method of paying for the war, or 
resort to further bonding, perpetuate conscription 
on the present scale or not, Americans will be de- 
ciding not merely a detached detail of legislation 
but principles far more important in their effect upon 
the daily Hves of the majority of the people than 
would be a decision as between, say, a monarchy and 
a republic. For the control of the railroads, for in- 
stance, involves the control, through rates, of the 
whole industrial life of the country; the future 
method of financing the war in its whole financial 
framework; the question of continued price-control 
in such things as coal and wheat, the economic stand- 
ard of life among the people; the future of the 
ships now being built, its foreign commercial policy, 
and, taken in conjunction with such things as the 
future military force of the country its whole re- 
lationship to the world at large, — the choice be- 
tween a future of nationalist commercial imperial- 
ism or international co-partnery in a Society of 
Nations. These questions are all in large degree 
inter-related and involve nothing less than the ques- 
tion of the socialization of wealth; the social revolu- 
tion which must now follow the industrial revolution; 
the future of the institution of private property, and 
of the old sovereign and independent state. Will 
America stand for the perpetuation of economic in- 
dividualism and the old world of rival nationalisms, 
tending, in the case of great states to imperialisms? 
Or will she set about that re-shaping of the industrial 
system at home and the international system abroad, 

[46] 



which the Labour Parties in Europe are already de- 
manding? 

For nearly fifty years now — as Lord Bryce has 
pointed out — American parties, unlike most Euro- 
pean political parties, have not been divided on 
questions of principle, if we except possibly Free 
Trade, and Bi-metallism. The contests have been 
over persons, or spoils, or mere inherited prefer- 
ences for rival organizations. A man belonged to 
one party rather than to the other as he might join 
the Independent Order of Foresters instead of the 
Masons; or be an Elk instead of a Buffalo. And 
he would have a sense of good-natured triumph if 
his Order instead of a rival Order captured the gov- 
ernment. But as to deep principles for which a 
man would die. . . . Sometimes the Republicans 
have been the Conservatives as against the Reforming 
Democrats; sometimes the roles have been changed. 
At bottom there is no distinction of political prin- 
ciple. Nobody could tell you which Party stands 
for the estabHshed order, and which against. Of 
recent years the Republicans are supposed to have 
stood for " big business " but that is accidental. 

The tendency has been fortified by the position of 
the State Legislature. Industrial legislation — fac- 
tory regulation, for instance — has been in the past 
generally the affair of the separate states. And 
that has made such questions local and geographical. 
And so complex is the machine that political action 
for social or industrial ends is mainly a matter of 
elaborate caucus organization. 

Under the influence of all these forces the political 
[47] 



parties have tended to become, In part purely pro- 
fessional organizations, in part semi-social, semi- 
charitable clubs or friendly societies, which can hope, 
during at least half the time, to support their officials 
at the public expense. 

The whole has resulted in making the American 
elector little interested in political principles — in 
what Mr. Easley would probably call " theories." 
That sort of discussion has been left to the for- 
eigners. It is one reason why the " Political " Trade 
Unions in America have been mainly foreign. 

It was a happy circumstance for America ; it was 
part of the general prosperity and success of this 
country — one of the things which marked her off 
from the old world, this fact that she did not have 
to take politics very seriously and that her people 
did not get excited over pohtical philosophies. 

But the day has gone when she can consider her- 
self above and beyond concern with the political pas- 
sions that disturb the rest of the world. She too, 
has become part of them. Who could have fore- 
told five years ago that an assassination by an ob- 
scure Serbian agitator in a remote Bosnian town 
would result in raising the question of the future 
of American railroads, the income tax which Ameri- 
cans shall pay, the drinks which they shall drink? 
Would cause vast American armies to cross the seas 
and thousands of young Americans to give up their 
lives? There is not an American mother uncon- 
cerned with the future of Serbia and Bohemia; the 
happiness of their populations will directly affect the 
livej of her children — Serbian unhappiness indeed 

[48] 



has cost the Hves of very many American citizens. 
It may be that there will continue to operate in 
American society, factors militating against the de- 
velopment of political mindedness. In that case 
the effective solution of American problems will 
be retarded. A more hopeful anticipation is that 
the necessity will stimulate the development of the 
needed qualities. In that case the time will come 
when political philosophies, problems of socialism, 
syndicalism, of nationality, will be as earnestly de- 
bated here as In Europe ; when Americans will take 
their politics as seriously as do Europeans. To 
assume that the American workman will consent to 
leave these poHtlcal questions to the " high brows," 
is not only to disparage his Intelligence as a self-gov- 
erning citizen, but to deny the reality of America's 
democracy. And this keener and more vivid interest 
and concern of the American workman in large po- 
litical principles will mark the end of " pure and 
simple trade unionism " as similar forces marked 
its end in Europe. 



[49] 



PART II 

BRITISH LABOUR PROGRAMMES AND 
THE FORCES BEHIND THEM 



CHAPTER I 

WHAT IS THE BRITISH LABOUR PARTY? 

Historical outline of the Party; its constituent elements. 
Its position in the ebb and flow of present party reorganiza- 
tion in England. The general question of political action 
by trade-union forces in England. The gradual disappear- 
ance of " absolute " socialism in Europe, and the substitution 
for cast iron dogmas a general socializing tendency in radical 
political programmes. Socialism and Democracy; " Social- 
ism versus the State." French syndicalism, British guild 
socialism, Bolshevism, and impossibilism in Labour politics. 
The English Parliamentary system and comparison with the 
American Constitution. 

The British Labour Party was, until just recently 
a Federation, consisting of Trade Unions, the " In- 
dependent Labour Party," the Fabian Society, the 
Woman's Labour League, a few co-operative soci- 
eties and a number of Trades Councils and local 
Labour Parties. It was an outgrowth of the non- 
political Trade Union movement, and was brought 
into existence as the result of a resolution of the 
Trade Union Congress of 1899 which directed a 
committee to " devise ways and means of securing 
an increased number of Labour members in Parlia- 
ment.^ A year later a distinct Labour Group came 

1 As early as 1868, which year saw the passing of the Reform 
Act which enfranchised the workmen in the Boroughs, a movement 

[53] 



Into existence in Parliament, on independent lines, 
with its own whips and its own poliq^. 

The group steadily increased in numbers. After 
the general election of 19 lo the Labour Group num- 
bered forty-two in the House of Commons, and were 
consequently on a narrow division by no means a 
negligible quantity. But it was not yet a national 
political party capable of challenging the two great 
historic parties on their own ground. Not a party 
at all in the accepted sense of the word. It was still 
a mere Federation of Labour and Socialist Societies. 
*' As the war wore on," writes Mr. Arthur Hender- 
son, its present Secretary and virtual political leader, 
in recounting its most recent developments, " we were 
led to see that if Labour is to take its part in creating 
the new order of Society, it must address itself to the 
task of transforming its political organization from 
a federation of societies into a national popular 
party, rooted in the life of the democracy, and de- 
riving its principles and its policy from the new 
political consciousness." 

That task of reconstruction and re-organization is 
not yet completed, but its main principles are already 
pretty clearly indicated. Mr. Henderson says : 

" The outline of the new party constitution is now 
familiar to every attentive reader of the newspapers. 
It contemplates the creation of a national democratic 
party, founded upon the organized working-class 

was started to secure the return of Trade Union members to 
Parliament. In 1874 fourteen candidates went to the poll, but 
only two were returned. In 1895 the number had reached twelve. 
It was not until 1903 that the candidates of the Labor Represen- 
tation Committee obtained any notable success at the polls. 

[54] 



movement, and open to every worker who labours by 
hand or brain. Under this scheme the Labour 
Party will be transformed, quickly and quietly from 
a federation of societies, national and local, into a 
nation-wide political organization with branches in 
every parliamentary constituency, in which members 
will be enrolled both as workers and as citizens, 
whether they be men or women, and whether they 
belong to any trade union or socialist society or 
are unattached democrats with no acknowledged al- 
legiance to any industrial or political movement. 
We are casting the net wide because we realize that 
real political democracy cannot be organized on 
the basis of class interest. Retaining the support of 
the affiliated societies, both national and local, from 
which it derives its weight and its fighting funds, the 
Labour Party leaves them with their voting power 
and right of representation in its councils unim- 
paired; but in order that the party may more faith- 
fully reflect constituency opinion it is also proposed 
to create in every constituency something more than 
the existing trades council or local labour party. It 
is proposed to multiply the local organizations and 
to open them to individual men and women, both 
hand-workers and brain-workers, who accept the 
party constitution and agree with its aims. The 
Individually enrolled members will have, like the 
national societies, their own representatives in the 
party's councils, and we confidently believe that year 
by year their influence will deepen and extend. The 
weakness of the old constitution was that it placed 
the centre of gravity in the national society and 

[55] 



not In the constituency organization: It did not en- 
able the individual voter to get into touch with the 
party (except in one or two isolated cases, like that 
of Woolwich or Barnard Castle) except through the 
trade union, the socialist society or the co-operative 
society. The new constitution emphasizes the im- 
portance of the Individual voter. It says to the man 
and woman who have lost or never had sympathy 
with the orthodox parties, ' You have the oppor- 
tunity now not merely of voting for Labour repre- 
sentatives in Parliament, but of joining the party and 
helping to mould Its policy and shape its future.' " 

The British Labour movement In Its industrial, 
political and co-operative aspects, is an exceedingly 
complex group of organizations, and might seem to 
the outsider a bewildering tangle of Interlocking 
groups. But although it has grown haphazardly 
and experimentally it has far more cohesion than 
appears on the surface, and certain tendencies are 
constant and unmistakable. And perhaps the most 
constant and unmistakable of all is the development 
away from "pure Trade Unionism" to wider so- 
cial and political activities, a development towards 
what, for want of a better term, must be called a 
Socialist policy — though the characteristic of the 
party is its absence of doctrinal emphasis and its 
reliance instead, upon a wise eclecticism and the ap- 
peal of measures rather than doctrines. Yet the 
growth of the Socialist inspiration is unmistakable. 
In the twenty years which elapsed between the elec- 
tion of the first labour candidate to Parliament 
(1874) and the creation of the Independent La- 

[56] ' 



hour Party (a definitely Socialist organization) the 
Social propagandists seemed to be condemned po- 
litically to utter futility.^ No one today can ques- 
tion the immense influence in British Labour politics 
of the work that has been carried on by the Fabian 
Society ^ and the I. L. P. — and the influence of the 
personalities that have come out of those organiza- 
tions. 

It must not be assumed that the Labour Party 
represents the entire Trades Union movement of 
Great Britain.^ It is possible indeed that that move- 

1 In 1885 the old Social Democratic Federation ran two parlia- 
mentary candidates; one received twenty-nine votes, and the other, 
thirty-two ! 

2 The Fabian Society consists of so-called middle-class intellectual 
Socialists, among its distingushed members past and present being 
George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells (since resigned), Sidney 
Webb, Annie Besant, Sir Sidney Olivier and Graham Wallas. 
The " basis " of this society defines its aim as " the reorganization 
of Society by the emancipation of land and industrial capital from 
individual and class ownership and the vesting of them in the 
community for the general benefit. . . . Industrial inventions and 
the transformation of surplus income into capital have mainly 
enriched the proprietary class, the working class being now de- 
pendent upon that class for leave to earn a living." The Fabian 
Society's method has been called " the policy of permeation," be- 
cause it urges its members to use whatever influence they possess 
in any circles whatsoever to promote Socialist opinions and to 
induce action in the direction of Socialism. The work of the 
society has been more in the direction of research and dissemina- 
tion of exact knowledge than of widespread propaganda. 

3 The total number of separate trade unions in the United King- 
dom at the end of 1914 was 1,123 with a total membership of 
3,959,863. The growth of membership has been very steady. In 
1899 the number was 1,860,913; in 1907 it had increased to 2,- 
425,153; and in 1911 to 3,081,903. Apart from the Trade Union 
Congress and the Labour Party which is a mixed federation com- 
posed of trade unions and socialist bodies, united for a special 
political purpose, and those local labour parties and trade coun- 
cils, which, though federal in structure, have special functions of 
their own, there are about 119 federations, of which one-third are 
local, and in addition numerous joint committees and working 
agreements serving to link up the sections of the industrial move- 
ment, The General Federation of Trade Unions is one of the 

[57] 



ment will split over certain planks in the recently 
sanctioned programme. All English parties are in 
a molten state and it is too early yet to see what, in 
the way of permanent organization, will come from 
the new casting. 

" If the war has almost abolished Liberalism and 
changed the face of Toryism, it has split the old 
Labour Party into fragments," says one observer."^ 
A portion has followed Mr. George. Another part 
has been absorbed into the work of war administra- 
tion. A third has formed what is known as " The 
British Workers' League." At present writing this 
last can hardly be taken seriously and it is regarded 
with avowed suspicion by the mass of the workmen. 
" Who finds the funds for its ample propaganda? " 
asks the London Nation. "The Trade Unions? 
Hardly. And what explains the ready hospitality 
of the Times and the support which the League 
clearly obtains in powerful circles of capitalism? ^ 
The motive is avowed. The British Workers' 

119 federations mentioned above, as well as such organizations 
as the Miners Federation of Great Britain, the Federation of En- 
gineering and Shipbuilding Trades, the Textile Federations, the 
General Laborers National Council, and the National Joint Com- 
mittee of Postal Telegraph Associations. Trades Councils arc 
local federations of trade union branches. They number 273 with 
1,523,274 members. Their activities are political as well as in- 
dustrial and they work in close association with the local labour 
parties. In certain counties and groups of counties there are 
federations of trade councils. 

1 London Nation, July 6, 1918. 

2 See a series of extracts published in The Herald (London) of 
November 17, 1917, from the secret suggestions of a body of em- 
ployers who asked their friends to give their support, among other 
"outside bodies," to "The British Workers' League" and the 
" Women's Social and Political Union," on the ground that they 
were organizing " counter propaganda, from various points of 
view, against the revolutionary tendencies in British industry." 

[58] 



League is regarded as a counter-revolutionary body. 
Its merit in the eyes of the powerful men who watch 
and would mould the new order in the interests of 
capital is that it rejects Free Trade, and adopts the 
programme of the Paris Conference. A further 
reason for treating it as a friend is that it proposes 
to replace the class-war by a minimum wage and 
the abolition of restriction of output. Here, then, 
the driving power of the new capitalism has been 
found. In exchange for a guarantee of high wages, 
the workmen's leaders are expected to take their 
hand off the regulator. The industrial problem will 
thus have been solved. For the rest, the League and 
its affinity, the Merchant Seamen's League, are for 
the war after war. The latter calls for the boycott 
of German goods and German ships." 

The observation is cited for what it is worth. 
The same authority regards the Labour Party 
proper— -"the medium party of Mr. Webb and 
Mr. Henderson " as virtually '' the old trade union- 
ism, coupled with a formal admission of the brain- 
worker into its councils and candidatures, a definite 
Parliamentary policy, and a somewhat less definite 
programme of Webbian ' reconstruction.' Its chief 
novelty is the development of the old Fabian tactic 
of permeating the middle-classes with moderate col- 
lectivism." 

In order to appreciate the relation of the new 
party to such forces as the older non-political Trade 
Unionism, the older Socialism and the newer Syndi- 
calism, and to estimate its probable political scope, 
American observers should keep in mind particularly 

[59] 



certain essential differences between the political 

systems of the United States and of England, and 

certain recent developments of Socialist theory and 

practice. Particularly is that necessary in view of 

the character of criticism voiced quite frankly by 

Mr. Samuel Gompers and his associates.^ Their 

chief criticism might perhaps be summarized thus: 

( I ) The effective action of labour in the 

future will be through economic and industrial, 

not political means. (This is ground upon 

which a narrow capitalism, " pure and simple " 

1 Mr. Gompers writes of the Reconstruction Report of the Labor 
Party Sub-Committee in The American Federationist for April, 
1918: 

" The first striking contrast of fundamental importance is that 
the British proposal deals with Labor's achievements in the future 
wholly in political terms. The problems are formulated as politi- 
cal issues and the agency designated is the political party. In 
England the Labor Party seeks a wider field of activity, even 
domination of the labour movement. In the United States condi- 
tions are different. Labor's welfare and protection is regarded 
as fundamentally an economic problem to be dealt with by eco- 
nomic agencies." 

Mr. Gompers goes on to point out that the American labour 
movement has always rejected all attempts by the "intellectuals" 
to dominate the movement, and asserts that " American labour 
resents the invidious distinction implied in the phrase used in the 
British document, ' hand or brain workers.' " And in conclusion 
he finds " little practical help for real achievements. In the future, 
as in the past, we must trust to the economic organization of the 
workers. Whatever glorious reconstruction ideal may be painted 
by any word-brush, it can have reality only through achievements 
by those who with hands and brains do the actual work of pro- 
duction." 

One commentator points out that an uninformed person might 
conclude from this that Mr. Gompers was one of those Radical 
Laborites who shunned association with any but wage earners and 
who placed all his reliance on the strike — a labour leader, in fact, 
of the syndicalist school. Yet Mr. Gompers' legislative agents 
work actively for Workmen's Compensation Acts, eight-hour bills, 
and anti-child-labour bills, and against prohibition. And several 
powerful State Federations belonging to the American Federation 
are working actively for health insurance by the State, although 
in this he withholds his approval. 

[60] 



trade unionism, and a type of dogmatic syndi- 
calism can meet.) 

(2) " Intellectuals," brain workers, are not 
of the working class properly speaking, and 
they do not understand its spirit; they are mis- 
representative politicians, not working men. 

(3) In the social field the pursuit of Uto- 
pias defeats the efforts at real improvement; 
as witness Bolshevism in Russia. The chaos 
which always follows the attempt to put Utopian 
programmes into effect will destroy confidence 
in such organizations as the British Labour 
Party. 

Those points will be dealt with seriatim in due 
course. 

To understand in any due degree the significance 
of the recent European movements, we must note 
the developments of Socialist theory In recent years. 

It Is indicative of a good deal that in six books 
dealing with the Labour problem and published in 
America during the last two years, to which the 
present writer happened to turn for light on the 
American attitude towards Guild Socialism and Syn- 
dicalism, there is not one word about either move- 
ment — at least the Indices do not contain a hint 
of the discussion of either — although Industrial 
unionism, and a powerful movement hardly distin- 
guishable from continental syndicalism, have been 
for several years an important part of the problem 
of labour in the United States, and although technical 
Socialist literature in America has dealt with the 
matter at some length. 

[61] 



Would it be an exaggeration to say that perhaps 
nine Americans out of ten, outside of certain labour 
unions and the Socialist Party, would today be unable 
to say what Syndicalism is; how it differs from 
Marxian Sociahsm, or from Guild Socialism? The 
fact gives a hint of the extent to which great masses 
in a country like the United States may be completely 
ignorant of movements going on in their midst, 
movements destined perhaps to have most revolu- 
tionary results. It indicates the extent of the truth 
already touched upon, that the discussion of political 
and social principles in the United States is not a 
general interest of the population. In America So- 
cialism and its growth and development is an affair 
of the Socialists. In Europe it has become the affair 
of the whole people — even though the policies and 
measures discussed may not be called Socialism. 

" Socialism " to most non-Socialist Americans still 
connotes, perhaps, what Mr. Walter Weyl, in his 
illuminating treatise on " The New Democracy " ^ 
calls " absolute socialism "^ — the Socialism of eco- 
nomic fatalism, the class struggle, the " inevitable 
crisis " and " surplus value " of Karl Marx. That 
" absolute Sociahsm " is not the Socialism which ex- 
ercises political influence in Europe, (save in Rus- 
sia). It is not the Socialism of the British Labour 
Party Programme. It is not, in fact, the Socialism 
of the German Social Democracy, and incidentally, 
perhaps it is not the Socialism of the American So- 
cialist Party, which in recent years has shown an in- 
creasing Fabianism and a tendency to leave " abso- 

1 Macmillans, 1912. 

[62] 



lute " Socialism to the much less considerable Social- 
ist Labour Party.^ 

Just because of the fact that discussion of political 
theory is not widespread among the people of the 
United States, general public opinion in such matters 
is likely to be " behind the times " and still thinks 
of Socialism in the terms of the iron-clad doctrine 
of Marx — or his older interpreters. That doctrine 
included not only an economic fatalism which re- 
garded the destruction of the capitalist system as in- 
evitable, apart from the human will, but a theory 
of a " crisis " and " class struggle " by which the 
great revolution was to come. The outstanding 
characteristic of the " hard shell " Socialist of that 
earlier type was his opposition to bourgeois reform 
as tending to postpone the " inevitable " cataclysm. 
All attempts at economic legislation were to be post- 
poned until a Socialist majority should have given 
the proletariat complete control. Thus " the plat- 
form of the Socialist Labour Party contains no im- 
mediate demands, and in the Sociahst Party a member 
of the National Committee has declared ' We can 
shove the whole reform sentiment out of the party 
and be the better for it.' " ^ 

1 In his introduction to Miss Jessie Hughan's " American Social- 
ism of the Present Day," Mr. John Spargo says the book " brings 
into bold relief the fact that . . . the movement is undoubtedly 
losing its dogmatic and sectarian character — imposed upon it 
quite naturally and unintentionally, by the German exiles who 
first propagated the teachings of Marx in this country." 

2 Quoted by Miss Hughan in " American Socialism of the Present 
Day" (p. 172), as indicative of the older type. She says: "The 
extreme interpretation has never characterized Marxism, Marx and 
Engels declaring as far back as the Manifesto that ' the social 
scum' is less fit to take part in the social revolution than to become 
the tool of reactionary intrigue." It would perhaps be truer to 

[63] 



That earlier doctrine of " absolute Socialism " 
claimed for the working man the full product of 
Labour. " Anything less, however little less," says 
Mr. Weyl, interpreting this doctrine, " was exploita- 
tion. Exploitation, however, could not be little. 
The share of capital tended to absorb the whole 
product of labour above a despicable subsistence 
wage. It was not the employer's fault, — he was 
as much in the grip of a system as the least of his 
employes." 

For the sake of his profits the manufacturer must 
allow his workmen to survive. For the overturn 
of capitalism nothing but this survival was necessary. 
" Since private ownership of the means of production 
led automatically to increasing misery, oppression, 
servitude, degradation, and exploitation, it followed, 
even without other assumptions, that private prop- 
erty must be expropriated and converted into public 
property." Such a philosophy of wholesale ex- 
propriation would, it was foreseen, antagonize all 
property owners, including traders, and farmers or 
peasants. But, it was assumed, the automatic prog- 
ress of industry would expropriate these " rapidly 
sinking " middle classes, who would then, instinc- 
tively, join hands with other proletarians. " Finally 
the proletariat would come to represent practically 
all of society, and would be aligned against a ' com- 
paratively small number of capitalists and great 
landowners.' When that time came the capitalistic 
system with all its exploitations and disharmonies 

say that while it may not have characterized Marx it has char- 
acterized much Marxism. 

[64] 



would cease, and a new era would be born, in which 
economic, political and social organization could be 
based on the common ownership of the means of 
production, and economic justice and human dignity 
would be attained." 

Such broadly was the theory of the class war, and 
the crisis. It was simple, absolute, and had all the 
appeal of a religious doctrine. 

But it is no longer accepted in Europe by any 
powerful group, outside the Russian Bolsheviks,^ if 
even by them. The Socialists of the country that 
nursed it have rallied to the " Revisionists " and 
the " Opportunists." " Today," says Mr. Weyl, 
" men who were formerly convinced are escaping 
from the obsession of this imposing theory . . . 
learning to interpret otherwise the vast democratic 
re-organization of society which Marx foresaw." 
The theory that Socialists should not co-operate in 
any preliminary betterment of the workman's lot 
which involved any temporary recognition of the 
" capitalistic order " has been all but universally 
abandoned by organized Socialism in England, 
France, Germany, Italy, and the lesser European 
states. Almost everywhere Socialist parties have 
co-operated in legislation, looking to the regulation 
of factory conditions, to the limitation of the la- 
bour of women and children, to the protection of 
life, limb and the health of workers : to facilitating 
the recovery of damages in case of injury or death; 

1 " Some of our socialist comrades," said Jaures, in 1912, " inter- 
pret the class war in a sense much too simple, one-sided and 
abstract." According to Sarraute the class war is not " an abso- 
lute abstract principle absorbing the whole life of Society." 

[65] 



to compulsory state insurance against old age, sick- 
ness, accident, invalidity, and even unemployment; 
to improved educational facilities, housing reform, 
enlarged franchise, protection of trade union rights. 

" Socialists," says Mr. Hillquit, " attach the 
greatest importance to all reforms of this character. 
They realize that the task of transforming the mod- 
ern capitalist society into a Socialist commonwealth, 
can be accomplished only by the conscious, systematic, 
and persevering efforts of working class physically, 
mentally and morally fit for the assumption of the 
reins of government, and not by a blind revolt of a 
furious and desperate rabble." ^ 

But " absolute socialism " has been modified in re- 
cent years in another way. Most modern socialist 
writers realize that not all wealth used in the pro- 
duction of other wealth is capital, subject to collec- 
tive ownership. Working Socialism does not pro- 
pose, even ultimately, the expropriation of such 
" means of production " as the needle or the spade. 
Even Kautsky, pure Marxian though he be, assures 
the small farmer that he is not to be molested in 
the independent working, and even ownership of his 
land.^ And agriculture is not the only field in which 

1 " Socialism in Theory and Practice," p. 124. 

2 The division of thought in Socialist ranks may be gathered 
from the following bit of the history of Socialism in America 
recorded by Miss Hughan: "The 1908 programme of the Socialist 
Party included no specific agricultural reforms, devoting only a 
phrase to the present exploited condition of the small farmer, and 
embraced in its immediate demands the collective ownership of all 
land. Within a year, however, an amendment to the platform was 
passed by national referendum which marks a turning point in 
American Socialism. By this amendment the words, * and all land,' 
were struck out from the demands and the following inserted in the 
sections on General Principles: 

[66] 



modern socialism expects the continuance of much 
private production. " Marxians are agreed upon 
the needlessness of interference with the non-exploit- 
ing mechanic or tradesman, and the only dispute in 
the matter between the orthodox and the Revision- 
ist is as to the prospect of the automatic disappear- 
ance of these small industries under the pressure of 
centralized competition, be the latter capitalist or 
socialist in nature. The divergence of present-day 
Socialism on this point from the complete collectiv- 
ization of Bellamy is indicated by the fact that a 
party speaker stated recently to a large gathering of 
the rank and file his belief that in the coming com- 
monwealth only 50 or 60 per cent, of the means of 
production would be socialized." ^ 

But not only has the movement represented by the 
British Labour Party given no sanction to the narrow 
political theologies which marked certain phases of 

" ' There can be no absolute private title to land. All private 
titles, whether called fee simple or otherwise, are and must be 
subordinate to the public title. The Socialist Party strives to 
prevent land from being used for the purpose of exploitation and 
speculation. It demands the collective possession, control, or man- 
agement of land to whatever extent may be necessary to attain 
that end. It is not opposed to the occupation and possession of 
land by those using it in a useful and bona fide manner without 
exploitation.' " 

Needless to say, the passing of this declaration has aroused great 
antagonism among those party members who cling to the inter- 
pretation of the class struggle as excluding the independent worker, 
and to the expectation of automatic concentration in all industry. 
The rival Socialist Labor Party, which still demands in its plat- 
form the public ownership of the land and all means of production, 
hailed with joy this proof of the "middle-class" character of the 
Socialist Party, and gave great publicity to the secession of a ward 
branch in Denver on the ground of the party decision " to drop 
Socialism from its platform and adopt in its stead an emasculated 
form of the late lamented Single Tax." 

1 Miss Hughan, " American Socialism," p. 125. 

[67] 



Marxian Socialism. It is realized that the mere ab- 
sorption of industries by the state — the institution 
of state monopolies — is not Socialism; that a 
bureaucratic State Socialism such as is conceived by 
some members of the English Fabian Society might 
well produce a servile community in which the worker 
would be the wage slave of a state official instead of 
a capitalist. This has recently been emphatically 
voiced by M. Emile Vandervelde, the distinguished 
Belgian Socialist and President of the International 
Socialist Bureau, in a book which he has entitled " Le 
Soclahsme contre I'Etat," the object of which is to 
combat the fallacy, shared, as he says by many So- 
cialists, or persons claiming that title, that Socialism 
is identical with " fitatlsme." He has no difficulty 
In showing that even the Socialism of Marx and 
Engels was far from being etatiste in the accepted 
sense, since it aimed at the abolition of the state as 
we know it. They never supposed that a state 
monopoly was Socialism. Many of their followers 
have even opposed all state monopolies as dangerous 
to the proletariat, on the ground that they paralyse 
the action of the working class and strengthen the 
bourgeoisie. M. Vandervelde points out the danger, 
for instance, which would arise if the employes of 
the state are prevented from organizing themselves 
and are deprived of the right to strike. The notion 
that Socialism can be brought about by the gradual 
absorption of production by the state or the muni- 
cipalities — that, for Instance, the municipalization 
of the gas or water is a step toward State Socialism 

[68] 



— is a delusion.^ To this conception, that of the 
organization of labour by the state, Socialism prop- 
erly so-called opposes that of the organization of 
labour by the workers themselves, grouped in vast 
associations independent of government. Vander- 
velde points out that State control of industry for 
the purposes of the war has greatly diminished the 
liberty of the workmen and hampered their collective 

^ State Socialism has no necessary connection either with de- 
mocracy or with Socialism. It is true that if a so-called State 
Socialist policy is so undemocratic as that of Bismarck, we may 
decide, on strict examination, that it is not State Socialism at all, 
but merely the ancient use of the State for the purpose of the 
ruling classes. On the other hand, if those ruling classes feel 
sufficiently secure in the control of the State they may systematically 
increase its industrial functions and its control over industry with- 
out demanding any direct or immediate profit to their private in- 
dustrial enterprises, i. e., they may adopt a genuine State Socialist 
policy. They may feel sufficiently secure in other special privileges 
offered to them by the State, such as subsidized educational oppor- 
tunities beyond the economic reach of the masses or even of lower 
middle class (except in relatively rare instances), followed by ad- 
mission to the enormous and varied Civil Service, which is open 
to those who have secured such educational privileges. Educa- 
tional privileges may automatically be granted, the most expensive 
being practically open only to the well-to-do classes, while the next 
most expensive are almost exclusively open to the upper middle 
classes, etc. 

On the other hand, a so-called State Socialist policy under the 
control of a democratic government consisting of small private 
producers, such as that of New Zealand, may be used chiefly as a 
means of subsidizing these small producers at the expense of the 
State and other social classes; this, of course, would mean that 
this " State Socialism " was being used in order to increase the 
relative strength of private as compared with governmental in- 
dustry. But again, the same policy of extending the economic 
functions of the government carried out by the same State Socialism, 
for the small producers might feel that they were in sufficiently 
secure control of the government and that their economic status 
was sufficiently certain so that a satisfactory major share in the 
benefits of government industry would come to them automatically 
without any subsidy, even in the most indirect form, for it might 
be their belief that the offices and other emoluments of the State 
would fall largely into their hands. " State Socialism," Walling 
and Laidler, pp. XXIV-XXV. 

[69] 



action and it might easily be used to reduce them to 
complete subserviency and to make efforts at 
economic emancipation more difficult than ever. In- 
deed M. Vandervelde seems to go so far as to leave 
the impression that the workers should aim at the con- 
quest of political power, so as to obtain control of 
the state in order to get rid of it. For the " gov- 
ernment of men " Socialism would substitute the 
" administration of things." But M. Vandervelde 
shows that the conquest of political power alone will 
not be sufficient. He devotes much space in his work 
to exposing the failure of political democracy and 
of the parliamentary system. It is, perhaps, as 
one critic points out, a wholesome corrective to the 
notion that if Germany would only adopt the system 
of a government responsible to a parhament, all 
would be well. In fact, as P/I. Vandervelde shows, 
the people have very little more, effective influence 
on the government in the countries called democratic 
than in the others. Perhaps, as M. Vandervelde 
says, no country in the world is so completely dom- 
inated by the financial interests as France, which has, 
in form, the institutions most nearly democratic of 
all the great nations, not excepting the United 
States.^ 

^ It is significant in this connection that the French labour union 
movement is distinguished from those of all other nations in that 
it is mainly syndicalistic. This kind of labour union, which was 
created in France, and found active support in the southern nations 
of Europe, Italy, Spain and Portugal, has in the past minimized 
the importance of a strongly disciplined and centralized organi- 
zation, and placed its main emphasis on the readiness to strike. 
It avoids centralization wherever possible, discourages great union 
funds and sees in the general strike the real weapon of the work- 
ing-class. It either directly opposes or at least neglects political 

[70] 



It is altogether outside the scope of this book to 
give anything like an exhaustive analysis of the newer 
sociahst development as embodied in Syndicalism and 
Guild SociaHsm, if only because the proposals for 
which they stand are still fluid and indefinite — as 
indeed are the principles upon which the proposals 
are based. 

The reader may be referred to the already con- 
siderable literature of Industrial Unionism and 
Guild SociaHsm. The theories of both movements 
have contributed to the forces that have helped to 
give the Labour Party its programme. They have 
this much in common : The belief that the main unit 
of government should be, not that organization of the 
whole community which we have known in the past 
as " the state," but the workers' organizations, the 
Unions. Syndicalism ("Syndicat" is merely the 
French word for Trade Union) says in effect: 
" Let the Trade Unions run the country." Guild 
Socialism says more nearly: "Let the Unions run 
the industry of the country," recognizing that a 
country is made up not only of producers but 
consumers, not only of carpenters and bankers, 
railroad men and dentists, but also of men and 
women. 

Industrial unionism is familiar to readers in the 

action as unimportant. The central organization of the French 
labour unions is the General Confederation of Labor with 600,000 
members who are grouped into a number of national Federations, 
for the most part almost entirely in organizations based upon the 
industrial form of organization. Just before the war there was a 
tendency toward greater centralization, toward higher dues and 
systematic support of the strikers. More and more, the desire to 
emulate, to a degree at least, the German form of organization 
had found expression. 

[71] 



United States, mainly as represented by the I. W. W.^ 
Its doctrine generally is strictly proletarian, preach- 
ing Marxian economics and the class-war and de- 
manding the complete abolition of the state, which 
it regards as a capitalist institution destined to dis- 
appear with the capitalist system. " All power to 
the Soviets " represents not only its method but its 
ideal. " Here it is sharply differentiated from the 
guild socialist view," says Mr. G. D. H. Cole, the 

1 Miss Jessie Wallace Hughan, the well-known authority on the 
history of American Socialism, points out very truly that Industrial 
Unionism, the narrower activities of the I. W. W. and Syndicalism, 
are all often confused in the public mind, owing partly to the 
frankly indefinite membership of the American syndicalist organi- 
zations, partly to the vagueness attached to any new movement, 
and partly to the almost synonymous character of the words them- 
selves. " It may be borne in mind, however, that industrial union- 
ism embraces all upholders of the industrial as against the craft 
union, whether revolutionists or otherwise, and includes the ma- 
jority of Socialists as well as certain branches of the A. F. of L., 
such as the United Mine Workers. Syndicalism refers to the con- 
tinental movement, founded indeed upon the industrial union, but 
making this the basis of a complete revolutionary philosophy and 
tactics directed toward the overthrow of capitalism. The I. W. W., 
prominently before the American public as representing the in- 
dustrial union and the more radical Syndicalist movement, is a 
somewhat loosely organized national union, whose leaders are 
deeply impregnated with Syndicalist ideals, but whose rank and 
file consist largely of unskilled and alien workers brought together 
by the industrial union policies of low fees, short strikes, and 
welcome to all workers." 

Syndicalism, as has been said, is based upon the industrial union, 
with its accompanying features of local groups, mass action and 
the inclusion of both skilled and unskilled workers. It is revolu- 
tionary not alone in demanding the abolition of the wage system, 
but also in constituting itself the instrument for its overthrow. 
Where the old style union works for fair treatment by the capi- 
talist, and the Socialist strives for the ousting of the capitalist by 
political means, the Syndicalist expects the union itself to conquer 
industry and inaugurate the new commonwealth unaided. In this 
coming society, according to the Syndicalist ideal, the political state 
will have disappeared, and the sole government will be that of 
the industrial unions themselves, conducting production in their 
several fields according to the will of the workers, and loosely 
subordinate only to the general industrial organization. 

[72] 



recognized authority on Guild Socialism. " The 
national guildmen agree with the industrial union- 
ists in demanding the direct management of industry 
by the workers — by hand or brain — who are em- 
ployed in it; and they agree further in regarding the 
possession of economic power as the essential key 
to the possession of political power. They seek, 
however, not the abolition but the democratization 
of the state." Both represent attempts to arrive 
at a more real democracy. More important to the 
worker than the right to determine those things in- 
cluded in " politics " are the conditions of his own 
daily occupation, his right to have a part in the 
government of that phase of his life connected with 
his work. He knows little, it may be, of the " high 
politics " of his national government; and half the 
time he must vote blindly, without real knowledge. 
But he knows a great deal about the conditions in 
his workshop; he can vote on questions of wages, 
hours, management, supervision, workshop rights, 
with the knowledge of an expert. He is near to all 
that. The national government is far away. Un- 
der political democracy he is permitted to meddle 
with the things that are remote from him. In- 
dustrial democracy as expressed in Syndicalism or 
Guild Socialism would give him control in the things 
that are near to him, by a machinery which he him- 
self has in large part created, and with which he is 
familiar. 

Not only is this sound democracy, it is sound psy- 
chology as applied to the problem of labour. Some 
such device may help to satisfy what we have now 

[73] 



come to realize as one of the necessaries of a full 
life: the worker's interest in his task, and his satis- 
faction of the creative instinct. To make the factory 
or the Union truly the worker's, by giving him re- 
sponsibility therein, to make it his, to give him the 
interest of creation and control, is to satisfy a real 
human need. 

Miss Helen Marot, who has written so sugges- 
tively on " The Creative Impulse in Industry," 
points out very truly that it was never more appar- 
ent than it is now, that an increase in a wage rate 
is a temporary expedient and that wage rewards are 
not efficient media for securing sustained interest in 
productive enterprise. " It is becoming obvious that 
the wage system has not the qualifications for the 
co-ordination of industrial life. As the needs of the 
nations under the pressure of war have brought out 
the inefficiencies of the economic institution, it has 
become sufficiently clear to those responsible for the 
conduct of the war and to large sections of the 
civil population, that wealth exploitation and wealth 
creation are not synonymous; that the production of 
wealth must rest on other motives than the desire of 
individuals to get as much and give as little as par- 
ticular situations will stand." 

The shop-steward movement in England is, as 
the title suggests, an evidence of the trend of things 
towards the self-government of the workers. This 
movement is essentially an effort of the men in the 
workshops to assume responsibility in Industrial re- 
construction after the war, a responsibility which 
they have heretofore delegated to representatives 

[74] 



not connected directly with the shop production. 
Miss Marot's view as to the general American at- 
titude to similar tendencies on the part of Labour in 
this country, is worth parenthetical quotation in this 
connection. She says: 

The evidence of the desire on the part of the labour force 
to participate in the development of production is the factor 
we should keep in mind in any plans for democratic indus- 
trial reconstruction. It is inevitable that an effort to open 
up and cultivate this desire of labour will be regarded by 
the present governing forces with apprehension. The move- 
ment of labour in this direction is now looked upon with 
suspicion even by people who are not in a position of con- 
trol. The general run of people in fact outside of those 
who recognize labour as a fundamental force in industrial 
reconstruction, conceive of the labour people as an irrespon- 
sible mass of men and view their movements as expressions 
of an irresponsible desire to seize responsibility. They are 
the men who are not experienced in business affairs and there- 
fore cannot, it is believed, be trusted. The arguments against 
trusting them are the same old arguments advanced for 
many centuries against inroads on the established order of 
over-lordship. But over-lordship has flourished at all times, 
and in the present scheme of industry it flourishes as it always 
has, in proportion to the reluctance of the people to partici- 
pate as responsible factors in matters of common concern. 
Corruption and exploitation of governments and of industry 
are dependent upon the broadest possible participation of a 
w^hole people in the experience and responsibilities of their 
common life. It is for this reason that we need to foster 
and develop the opportunity as well as the desire for respon- 
sibility among the common people. 

After the war, it is to be hoped that America will under- 
take to realize through its schemes for reconstruction its 
present ideals of self-government. As it does this, we shall 
discover that the issues which are of significance to 

[75] 



democracy are of significance to education; for democracy 
and education are processes concerned with the people's abil- 
ity to solve their problems through their experience in solving 
them. If America is ever to realize its concept of political 
democracy, it can accept neither the autocratic method of 
business management nor the bureaucratic schemes of state 
socialism. It cannot realize political democracy until it 
realizes in a large measure the democratic administration of 
industry.^ 

But it will be noted that the British Labour Party 
both implicitly and explicitly gives no sanction to the 
revolutionary theories which would discard alto- 
gether the " bourgeois " method of political action 
through existing machinery. One may doubt indeed 
whether Syndicalism, a la Sorel, has ever had much 
influence in England. It is true that the emergence 
of the Labour party as a real force in 1906 was 
shortly followed by a period of political disillusion- 
ment. Finding that forty Labour Members in the 
House of Commons could not change the situation 
materially in a few years, the opinion of Labour 
swung back towards Industrial action, and the strike 
weapon, almost discarded by many unions in the 
early years of the century, was resumed with new 
vigour. This tendency was greatly stimulated from 
19 10 onwards by the growing hostility of Labour to 
the industrial policy of the Liberal government, par- 
ticularly as expressed In the Insurance act and the 
personality of Mr. Lloyd George. The shipyard 
movement of 19 10, the transport strikes of 19 11, 

i"The Creative Impulse in Industry," E. P. Button & Co. It 
may be pointed out that Miss Marot seems rather to ignore the 
proposals of political socialism which profess to avoid the dangers 
of inefficiency on the one hand and State Socialism on the other. 

[76] 



the miners' strike of 19 12, the famous Dublin dis- 
pute of 19 13-14, followed in quick succession; and, 
on the outbreak of war, not only was a great struggle 
in the building industry just drawing to a close, but 
still more serious trouble was threatened In the mines, 
on the railways, and in the engineering and other 
industries. Out of that situation arose a new spirit. 
National guilds, or guild socialism, on the one hand, 
and industrial unionism on the other, are both bodies 
expressing It In different ways and attempting to give 
to it a more definite direction and a more conscious 
ideal. " Both command only a very limited num- 
ber of absolute adherents " declares Mr. Cole. 
" There Is a growing mass of opinion in the trade 
union world which is neither Guild Socialist, nor in- 
dustrial unionist in the strict sense, but Is solving 
many of the same problems In the same way." 

We see that here too, the popular forces which 
constitute the power of the British Labour Party, 
show the same discerning pragmatism and eclecti- 
cism which they have shown. In reference to earlier 
socialist doctrine. Just as the disregard of the 
dogma of absolute socialism by the Labour Party as 
a party did not prevent co-operation of British So- 
cialists therewith, and just as the latter have realized 
that the mere absorption of Industries by the state 
is not socialism, so also have they realized that 
though, as the Syndicalists claim, the conquest of 
political power will not of itself suffice to give a real 
economic freedom to the mass, neither will the mere 
grouping of labour In vast associations independent 
of government or aiming at the destruction of the 

[77] 



political state prove anything but futile. A work- 
able policy, here, as so often, depends upon making 
the due distinction between what is necessary, and 
what is enough, between the indispensable and the 
sufficient. Because the organization of labour by 
the workers themselves apart from mere political 
democracy is indispensable, it has by some theorists 
been regarded as the sole means of effective working 
class action. Because political action of itself is in- 
effective, it has been concluded that it may safely be 
dispensed with.^ 

1 The disparagement of political action seems to have led certain 
French Socialists to violent opposition to democracy itself. Thus 
M. Sorel (not perhaps illogically) has recently developed into an 
advocate of the restoration of the monarchy in France, and has 
joined in the establishment of a royalist newspaper. 

Sorel is bitter in his criticism of democracy; it is, in his view, 
the regime par excellence in which men are governed " by the 
magical power of high-sounding words rather than by ideas; by 
formulas rather than by reasons; by dogmas the origin of which 
nobody cares to find out, rather than by doctrines based on obser- 
vation." It is the kingdom of the professionals of politics, over 
whom the people can have no control. Sorel thinks that even the 
spread of knowledge does not render the masses more capable of 
choosing and of supervising their so-called representatives and that 
the further society advances in the path of democracy, the less 
efFective does control by the people become. 

Mr. Levine, in his "Labor Movement in France" (pp. 141-6), 
writes: " M. Sorel having started out with Marx winds up with 
Bergson. The attempt to connect his views with the philosophy of 
Bergson has been made by M. Sorel in all his later works. But 
all along M. Sorel claims to be 'true to the spirit of Marx' and 
tries to prove this by various quotations from the works of Marx. 
It is doubtful, however, whether there is an affinity between the 
'spirit' of Marx and that of Professor Bergson. It appears rather 
that M. Sorel has tacitly assumed this affinity because he interprets 
the ' spirit ' of Marx in a peculiar and arbitrary way." 

M. Sorel is expressly not "true to the spirit" of Marx in this 
point. " Science has no way of foreseeing," says he. His works 
are full of diatribes against the pretention of science to explain 
everything. He attributes a large role to the unclear, to the sub- 
conscious and to the mystical in all social phenomena. A sentence 
like the following may serve to illustrate this point. Says M. 
Sorel : " Socialism is necessarily a very obscure thing, because it 

E78] 



It is true that there has been of late, in certain 
schools of political thought in Europe, much dispar- 
agement of Parliamentary government, which is de- 
clared to have had its day in France if not in Eng- 
land. In this condemnation the Syndicalist joins 
hands with the reactionary Royalist. (Sometimes, 
the two are combined in the same person as in the case 
of M. Sorel). 

That parliamentarism has become a very inef- 
fective political instrument is true, but the alterna- 
tive is neither a return to royal autocracy nor the 
substitution of a new kind of " class " government 
for the older one. Trade Unions, as the representa- 
tives of the special interests of producers, without 
reference to the interest of the whole as consumers, 
cannot of themselves constitute a workable state. 
But their role in the state is indispensable, and the 
genesis of Parliamentary government and its devel- 
opment gives a hint as to what that role should be. 

Parliamentary government arose and was per- 
petuated in England as an attempt to balance powers 
in the state: the power of the barons as against the 
king; and, later, of the burghers as against the 
landed interest. When the social and economic 
organism was relatively simple — when a country 
gentleman of decent feelings, really could speak com- 
petently for the interests of his county — the device 

treats of production — that is, of what is most mysterious in human 
activity — and because it proposes to realize a radical transfor- 
mation in this region which it is impossible to describe with the 
clearness which is found in the superficial regions of the world. 
No effort of thought, no progress of knowledge, no reasonable in- 
duction will ever be able to dispel the mystery which envelops 
Socialism." 

[79] 



worked fairly well. But the industrial revolution 
with its elaboration of railroad regulations, banking 
and currency laws, factory and insurance acts, has 
made legislation an infinitely complex business, and a 
Parliament as developed in England has become an 
" incompetent " body in both the English and the 
French sense of that term. The fox-hunting country 
gentleman trying conscientiously to find his way 
through the intricacies of banking and currency laws, 
railroad and insurance regulation, is simply a pa- 
thetic spectacle. The need is not mainly now for a 
balance of powers in the state, but for technical com- 
petence, for knowledge of how to make the complex 
machine of society work efficiently. The possession 
of mere power by any party will not suffice. The 
Russian Soviets may possess the power in Russia, but 
not the knowledge to start the industrial machine 
to work once more. You may have " power " over 
your automobile or your watch in the sense that with 
a crow-bar you could smash them utterly to pieces. 
But the power to do that will not make them work. 
That is a fact too much neglected by those who strive 
for the capture of power in the modern state. 

The line of advance is not to abolish parliaments 
or deliberative or representative assemblies in favour 
of autocratic or bureaucratic organs, but to see that 
those assemblies are more truly representative and 
competent. This they cannot be until they include 
technical and occupational representation. The rep- 
resentative basis of our assemblies must not only be 
geographical areas, but trades, industries, profes- 

[80] 



sions ; we must vote not only as men and women but 
also as farmers, railway men, teachers, doctors. 
This fact, it will be noted, is recognized in the pro- 
gramme described later in these pages. 

It is not intended to imply that the re-organized 
Labour Party will not meet opposition in its pro- 
gramme of re-organization. Most assuredly It will. 
Changes of this character are bound to meet, within 
the ranks of an organization Hke the British Labour 
movement, the resistance of both Inertia and vested 
interest. Every old and well established organiza- 
tion tends to come under the control of elderly men, 
guided above all by long habit; of a fixed and some- 
what inflexible outlook. Instinctively resenting the 
intrusion of new blood and new methods — and 
younger men. 

It happened once to the present writer to hear a 
very influential and powerful American Labour 
leader of the older school make an elaborate plea 
for opposition to the newer tendencies. Most obvi- 
ously, however, the avowed motives were not the 
real motives. Just here and there in a moment of 
irritation the deeper impulse revealed Itself. If he 
could have discarded the more rationalized case for 
his opposition and come to the real ground, I think 
his speech would have run something like this: 

I and my colleagues have been for thirty years leaders of 
great Trade Union organizations — working men, leaders 
of working men. We have fought for better wages and 
shorter hours and we have got them. We belong to your 
class and we know your feelings. We have not given you 

[8i] 



high brow stuff about a new social order ; we have given you 
more money and better conditions. You have given us great 
authority and we have used it to your advantage. We have 
understood one another and we have built up great organiza- 
tions which are yours, and belong to your class. Now along 
come college bred socialists that don't belong to the working 
class order, talking about a new heaven and a new earth — 
education, marriage reform, the endowment of motherhood, 
old age pensions, heaven knows what. And we have got to 
become politicians and intellectuals, instead of sticking to the 
old well tried lines. That is all unfamiliar ground to us, 
and, if we enter on it, it will be the end of the old system 
which has given us autocratic power in great organizations 
and you high wages. Have no truck with such new f angled 
notions, but stick to the leaders who have served you so well 
during a generation and to the organizations that you have 
built up from your own class — of working men, for work- 
ing men. 

Such was in fact the essence of a very frank ap- 
peal. The heads of powerful, wealthy, well-organ- 
ized and successful bodies would be more than hu- 
man if they were not actuated in some degree at least 
by the motive which such appeals reveal. 

But they cannot in the long run be successful. 
Every day narrows the gulf between the " intellec- 
tual " and the labourer, between the hand worker 
and the brain worker. The professions are as much 
the proletariat as the Trades. The school teachers 
in England have long possessed a powerful union; 
shop assistants (store clerks), clerks in offices, are 
certainly not less proletarian. In fact, as Trade 
Union organizations themselves gain in scope and 
complexity, they will demand the participation of 
trained administrators, accountants, managers, be- 

[82] 



longing far more to the " middle class " than to the 
hand workers. 

It is pretty safe indeed to say that the issue of po- 
litical action on behalf of working class interests has 
long since been settled in practically every country 
in Europe. The mass of ameliorative social legisla- 
tion, as already noted, has in recent years become 
enormous. For the workers to have no systematized 
representation in the making of laws which affect pro- 
foundly their daily hves — hours of work, employers' 
liability, child labour, health insurance, to say noth- 
ing of such things as taxation, and education — is to 
renounce democracy. Nor would It better the case 
to leave the representation of the workers in such 
matters as employers' liability to political parties 
drawn overwhelmingly from the employer class or its 
defenders. Indeed the democracies of western Eu- 
rope have reached a stage of development in which 
Trade Unionists who object to the political activities 
of Labour groups are themselves obliged to resort to 
political action in order to defeat those activities. 
When " non-political " Ttade Unionists in England 
are faced by the problem of defeating the policy of 
the " politicians," what action do those Trade Union- 
ists take? They form another political party; be- 
come politicians, in fact. 

There is one very considerable " new fact," by 
the way, which will affect the question of political 
action by Trade Union bodies, and that Is the emer- 
gence of the woman voter. The enfranchisement 
of women In England has virtually doubled the elec- 
torate. The women of the working classes are gen- 

[83] 



erally the keepers of the family budget, and they 
will have a livelier sense than the men, not only of 
such things as the future laws concerning marriage, 
the position of women and children in the institution 
of the family, the endowment of maternity, the feed- 
ing of school children, the care of their health, the 
character and cost of their education, but also of such 
things as the increased cost of living, the distribution 
and price of coal and milk. It is extremely doubt- 
ful whether they will be content to await the full 
flowering of the class triumph in the Marxian sense 
before dealing with these things by legislation. The 
women are likely to demand action as and when 
pressing need arises. In most cases that action must 
be political, on behalf, that is, of the whole of the 
nation as consumers, not of some industrial part of it 
organized into a Union as producers. The women 
will stand much more in the position of the con- 
sumer, and much less in the position of the producer 
than the men. And the interest of the consumer can- 
not be organized on a syndicalist basis; it must be 
organized on a universal, political basis. 

So far as action taken by Unions against the 
present British Labour Party is concerned, it is to be 
noted that not only is that action itself political, 
but that it is not based mainly upon the domestic 
programme of the party. It centres upon one item 
of its foreign policy — the proposal to meet enemy 
Socialists in Conference. The ground of opposi- 
tion will disappear automatically with the end of the 
war. Mr. Havelock Wilson and Captain Tupper, 
or the British Workers' League, will not then be 

[84] 



able to call a seaman's strike for the purpose of 
preventing Englishmen from meeting Germans, since 
Englishmen of the ruling class, the government and 
army, will necessarily be in Conference with Ger- 
mans of the same classes. (As a matter of simple 
fact they have been in conference during the war, 
and not alone over questions of exchange of pris- 
oners, as we now know. Mr. Havelock Wilson is 
quite prepared to allow Lords Newton or Curzon or 
Mllner, or General Smuts to meet German Princes 
and bureaucrats; It Is only the working men of the 
two countries that he will not allow to meet.) Even 
Mr. Gompers is prepared to meet German working 
men after the war. So the present most effective 
ground of opposition to the Labour Party proposals 
will have disappeared. On what ground then will 
the other Labour Party make Its appeal to the elec- 
torate? ^ 

It may well be — it Is almost certain indeed — 
that effective political action by the mass of the 
workers will be immensely more difUcult In America, 
than, in fact, it Is proving in England. That may 
forecast some constitutional change In America. 

What Is the crucial difference between the British 
and American political machinery of government? 
That America is a Federation of States and a Repub- 
lic, while Great Britain Is a unitary state and a mon- 
archy, Is less vital than external appearances would 

1 since the above was written objection has been taken to the 
Free Trade and general internationalist proposals of the Labour 
Party. The appeal of the new group is likely to be fiercely na- 
tionalist in tone: a working class support for imperialism in foreign 
affairs. It will be interesting to see how this is to be reconciled 
to future co-operation with America, France and Russia. 

[85] 



Indicate. The powers of the Federal government 
in America have so grovm under the influences of 
war conditions, (though the trend was ah'eady strong 
before the war) ; the tendency to diminish state 
rights seems to be so little opposed, and is so strongly 
reinforced by such economic needs as that of unifi- 
cation in railroad legislation, that America can cer- 
tainly no longer be described as a Federation of sepa- 
rate States in the sense in which even Hamilton 
would have understood the term. Nor is a Repub- 
lican form of government a vital differentiation. 
The British monarchy is an important fact in Eng- 
lish life, but not as a check upon popular right. Its 
influence is social, ornamental, psychological, not 
political in the ordinary sense of the term. 

The essential difference between the two forms of 
government should be sought elsewhere. It resides 
in the fact that in Britain the government — the ex- 
ecutive, that is — is the direct creation of the popu- 
lar representative body (the House of Commons), 
is absolutely controlled thereby, being daily de- 
pendent upon its support and good will; and in the 
fact that that Chamber is itself in effect the sovereign 
organ of the state. 

In America, on the other hand, the government is 
not responsible to the popularly elected Chamber, is 
not controlled thereby, and that Chamber is not a 
truly sovereign body. Disregarding the minor quali- 
fications and subsidiary mechanisms, how does the 
apparatus of government in Britain " work " ? 

The people (which now includes most of the 
women) elect a House of Commons; a committee, 

[86] 



In the selection of which the approval of that House 
is the predominant consideration, is formed; that 
committee is the government so long as it has the 
confidence of the House, and no longer. Any mem- 
ber of the government can at any moment (by the 
method of Questions to the Government) be sum- 
moned to give an account of his stewardship to the 
popular chamber, and any obvious failure may cost 
him at any moment his official life. Any obscure 
voter In any remote constituency, discovering what 
he beheves to be a failure or dereliction of duty on 
the part of a government department, can, through 
his member have a question asked of the Minister 
concerned. Failure to explain the matter may in- 
volve the whole government; the thing is in the hands 
of the popularly elected House. Or, by means of 
dissolution and general election the government may 
appeal over the heads of the House to the country. 
The relation between the vote and its effect on legis- 
lation and government is as simple and direct as by 
any means of government now actually at work in any 
great state. ^ 

The foregoing Is not a complete account of the 
working of the British constitution; it indicates only 
the controlling factor of its main mechanism. 

But note how different is the American method. 
The popular body is not elected all at once, but one 
portion at one time and one at another. It does not 
select or control the executive body of the govern- 
ment, which Is, in fact, completely divorced from It. 

1 President Woodrow Wilson is always understood to have 
favoured the British system of Parliamentary responsibility. As 
a professor of political science he certainly did so. 

[87] 



The executive head is by a separate process elected 
for a fixed period, removable only by the impossibly 
cumbrous process of Impeachment. He appoints a 
cabinet responsible, not to the people's representa- 
tives, but to himself. The popular Chamber has no 
control over the Cabinet, which possesses In fact, irre- 
sponsible power. Parliamentary responsibility of 
the executive does not exist under the American Con- 
stitution. The whole machinery is so complex that 
the relation between the vote of the common man 
and Its effect on legislation is about as remote as it 
well could be. It is extremely doubtful indeed 
whether the Constitution was ever devised to give the 
mass real control. It was devised at a time when 
popular government in the modern sense had not 
yet been evolved in the English speaking world, and 
when the great need was deemed to be the arrange- 
ment of " checks " and " balances." Being a written 
Constitution, hedged around with provisions against 
change. It has remained practically unaltered. The 
British Constitution, not being a code or written 
document at all, but a loose and elastic group of prec- 
edents, has adapted Itself more or less to the develop- 
ment that has gone on In the mass. 

Professor William E. Dodd of Chicago Univer^ 
sity has described the social and economic back- 
ground of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. 
" This convention," he says, "was plainly undemo- 
cratic and its members made no pretence of any deep 
or abiding faith in the common man. The great 
document, which was drawn, submitted to the people 
in conventions, and finally adopted against the most 

[88] 



violent protest in our history, set up anything but a 
simple democracy. It created a government of 
checks and balances so complex that only a small 
proportion of our people have ever yet understood 
its workings. A House of Representatives, elected 
biennially, was balanced by a senate which never 
went out of existence and whose members held office 
for six years. And all three, house, senate, and 
executive, were balanced by a supreme court which 
might veto laws that seemed unconstitutional. Thus 
a governmental machine was wound up like a clock 
and set going. At no time could the people inter- 
vene and change its policy unless they could work 
up such a commotion that house, senate, president 
and court would all be changed at the same time — 
a feat which has never been performed." ^ 

Serious checks and balances to ill considered legis- 
lation there are indeed in England, but they are not 
of the mechanical nature of those which the Ameri- 
can constitution provides. They arise from the 
moral conditions created by the working of the Eng- 
lish system. Close relation between the vote and 
its effect gives the voter responsibility; the English- 
man is notoriously more politically minded than the 
American, he takes his politics more seriously because 
they are more serious, and makes them more matters 
of principle because the principles have effect in 
legislation. He has a keener and more critical eye 
on the action of the central government because he 
can affect it; the debates in Parliament are part of 
his daily reading. They are important items in the 

1 The International Journal of Ethics, July, 1918. 

[89] 



day's news, and he is educated politically by them. 

Then Parliament itself subjects the personnel of 
government to a sifting process. The men who hold 
power must be men commanding a certain influence 
in the House of Commons, which has generally had 
opportunities, of judging of their capacity. The 
conditions of political warfare compel each party to 
put its best men forward. A relatively — or com- 
pletely — unknown man may be nominated and 
elected President of the United States (Mr. Bryan 
was practically unknown at the time of his first 
nomination). The popular assembly in America in 
any case have had no means of judging of his capac- 
ity. But the Prime Minister of England must be a 
political leader in a real sense, and have established 
his capacity as such among those who have had an 
opportunity of knowing him.^ 

There are here a group of factors, elusive of meas- 
urement in some degree perhaps, but none the less 
real, which operate against anarchy and impossibil- 
ism In political life. 

I have touched upon this matter at some length 
because It bears upon the question of the effective- 
ness of political action by labour forces In Britain and 
America respectively. Very great change through 
political action Is obviously, for the reasons just indi- 
cated, a much simpler and easier matter in England 
than In America. This may be urged as a reason 

1 In practice of course the system is not by any means so couleur 
de rose. Collusion between the two parties, nepotism and scandals 
of a bad order mark the system in actual practice. But I am indi- 
cating nevertheless the theory of the thing and the broad facts of 
its modus operandi. 

[90] 



why America will not follow England along that 
particular road. But what Is likely to be the effect 
upon popular movement in America if a great eco- 
nomic democratization and emancipation is brought 
about in Britain, through an ease of political action 
which is denied Americans by that Constitution which 
they have been taught to believe the last word in 
political wisdom? If the contrast is striking, which 
it might well be, it cannot leave the mass of the 
American workers unaffected in their attitude to- 
wards existing political institutions. 

As to Utoplanism and Impossibilism in social re- 
form, which some American critics anticipate as the 
result of " political " Labour Parties, It Is certain that 
actual participation of working class organization In 
definite legislation would be a corrective of such 
tendencies. If the Bolsheviks had been for a gener- 
ation represented in a free parliament, if they had 
been obliged to submit their proposals to discussion, 
compelled publicly to meet objections; and if the 
public as a whole had been witnesses of that debate 
during a generation, one of two things would have 
happened: either the Bolsheviks would have lost all 
practical Influence with the public, or they would have 
been compelled to eliminate the impracticable fea- 
tures of their programme. 

If we recall the outstanding feature of that English 
Parliamentary mechanism which has already been in- 
dicated, we shall see that participation of Labour 
leaders in parliamentary life will be a corrective of 
" impossibilism " in social legislation. That correct- 
ing influence is indeed likely to be all too strong. 

[91] 



CHAPTER II 

THE PROPOSED MEASURES 

The outstanding measures proposed by the sub-committee 
of the British Labour Party in their report on Reconstruc- 
tion.^ The means to the end. Features in a programme of 
the Lanshury-H erald group. 

Although American public opinion as a whole, 
especially as exemplified In the dally press, has shown 
little interest In the British Labour Party programme, 
that programme has Interested very keenly the more 
forward looking elements In American Labour and 
Liberalism. One American Labour leader explained 
the Interest of certain American Labour circles In 
these terms : 

" The Programme constitutes a proposal for actual 
measures to be taken, and Is not the formulation of an 
abstract economic theory. Socialism has remained 
exotic In America In part because Its jargon of ' sur- 
plus value,' ' class struggle,' and the rest has passed 
over the heads of the average American workman. 
It has not conveyed any clear meaning to him, and 
it did not seem to be concerned with actual measures 
to be passed. The memorandum of the British 
Labour Party's Sub-committee does, on the contrary, 

1 And since the writing of these pages, adopted by the Party at 
its annual Congress. 

[92] 



deal with measures which are at least understandable 
and explainable, if not immediately practicable. 
Even so, the language of the memorandum is at 
times too academic and abstract." 

What follows is an attempt to summarize and 
simplify the actual proposals of the programme ; to 
indicate in subsequent chapters very briefly the spirit 
which underlies it, and which differentiates it from 
American industrial movements. 

The chief measures proposed in the Programme 
are these: 

" The immediate national ownership of rail- 
ways, canals, lines of steamships, mines and the 
production of electrical power; a united national 
service of communication and transport with a 
steadily increasing participation of the organ- 
ized workers in the management both central 
and local; the whole business of the retail distri- 
bution of household coal being undertaken as a 
local public service by the elected municipal or 
county councils; prices to be stabilized as much 
as they are In the case of railroad fares." 

" The expropriation of profit-making indus- 
trial Insurance companies." 

" The present system of centralized purchase 
of raw material and of ' rationing ' by joint 
committees of the trades concerned; of the 
present fixing, for standardized products, of 
maximum prices at the factory, at the warehouse 
of the wholesale trader and in the retail shop, 
to be retained." 
All the foregoing aiming, as a first result, at: 
[93] 



" The enforcement of a minimum standard of 

life in wages, housing, education, leisure, health, 

provision for maternity, and conditions of life 

generally affording a complete security against 

destitution, in sickness and health, in good times 

and in bad alike." 

The Programme itself indicates as the " Four 

Pillars of the House " that the Party proposes to 

erect, the following: 

(a) The Universal Enforcement of the Na- 

tional Minimum. 

(b) The Democratic Control of Industry. 

(c) The Revolution in National Finance. 

(d) The Surplus Wealth for the Common 

Good. 

The means to be employed for the attainment of 
these ends, are themselves part of the ends; for the 
ends are the quality of human society, and the means 
employed will largely determine that quality. 

The Programme does not postulate any exclusive 
theory or method. The fact that the Party is pre- 
pared to employ political means when available does 
not lead it to the conclusion that political means will 
always suffice. The implication of the whole is that 
the industrial organization of the workers must 
stand behind and reinforce any legislative measure 
secured by political action. The two methods must 
be combined. 

In the same way brain workers must be regarded 
as an integral part of the " Labour " movement, and 
their co-operation obtained. It is hoped through 
the proposed financial measures to identify the inter- 

[94] 



ests of large classes heretofore outside labour organ- 
izations with the new movement: 

" It is over the issue of how the financial bur- 
den of the war is to be borne, and how the neces- 
sary revenue is to be raised, the greatest political 
battles will be fought. In this matter the labour 
party claims the support of four fifths of the 
whole nation, for the interests of the clerk, the 
teacher, the doctor, the minister of religion, the 
average retail shop-keeper and trader, and all 
the mass of those living on small incomes are 
identical with those of the artisans." 
How radical are the financial measures involved 
may be gathered from the following: 

" For raising the greater part of the revenue 
required, the Party demands the direct taxation 
of incomes above the necessary cost of family 
maintenance; and, for the requisite effort to pay 
off the national debt, the direct taxation of pri- 
vate fortunes both during life and at death. 
. . . The income tax on large incomes to rise 
to sixteen and even nineteen shillings in the 
pound, (that is to say from eighty to ninety five 
cents on the dollar). . . . The Labour Party 
stands for a special capital levy to pay off, if 
not the whole, a very substantial part of the 
entire national debt." 
The method generally governing the means which 
it is proposed to employ to secure the ends In view, 
is the extension of the principle of legislation already 
in force. The various acts already passed and de- 
signed to secure either minimum wage or maximum 

[95] 



hours are to be extended in scope. To this effort is 
to be added a definite legislative attempt, not to 
ameliorate unemployment, but to prevent it. 

" It has always been a fundamental principle of 
the Labour party (a point on which, significantly 
enough, it has not been followed by either of the 
other political parties) that, in a modern industrial 
community, it is one of the foremost obligations of 
the government to find, for every willing worker, 
whether by hand or by brain, productive work at 
standard rates. 

" It is accordingly the duty of the government to 
adopt a pohcy of deliberately and systematically 
preventing the occurrence of unemployment, instead 
of, as heretofore, letting unemployment occur, and 
then seeking, vainly and expensively, to relieve the 
unemployed. It is now known that the government 
can, if it chooses, arrange the public works and the 
orders of national departments and local authorities 
in such a way as to maintain the aggregate demand 
for labour in the whole kingdom (including that of 
capitalist employers) approximately at a uniform 
level from year to year; and it is therefore a pri- 
mary obligation of the government to prevent any 
considerable or widespread fluctuations in the total 
numbers employed in times of good or bad trade." 

Here are the unemployment measures forecast: 

" In order to prepare for the possibility of there being 
any unemployment, either in the course of demobilization or 
in the first years of peace, it is essential that the government 
should make all necessary preparations for putting instantly 
in hand, directly or through the local authorities, such ur- 

[96] 



gently needed public works as (a) the rehousing of the popu- 
lation alike in rural districts, mining villages, and town 
slums, to the extent, possibly, of a million new cottages and 
an outlay of three hundred millions sterling; (b) the imme- 
diate making good of the shortage of schools, training col- 
leges, technical colleges, etc., and the engagement of the neces- 
sary additional teaching, clerical, and administrative staffs; 
(c) new roads; (d) light railways; (e) the unification and 
reorganization of the railway and canal system; (f) afforesta- 
tion; (g) the reclamation of land; (h) the development and 
better equipment of our ports and harbours; (i) the opening 
up of access to land by co-operative small holdings and in 
other practicable ways. Moreover, in order to relieve any 
pressure of an overstocked labour market, the opportunity 
should be taken, if unemployment should threaten to become 
wide spread, (a) immediately to raise the school-leaving age 
to sixteen; (b) greatly to increase the number of scholarships 
and bursaries for secondary and higher education; and (c) 
substantially to shorten the hours of labour of all young 
persons, even to a greater extent than the eight hours per 
week contemplated in the new Education bill, in order to 
enable them to attend technical and other classes in the day- 
time. Finally, wherever practicable, the hours of adult la- 
bour should be reduced to not more than forty-eight per week, 
without reduction of the standard rates of wages. There 
can be no economic or other justification for keeping any 
man or woman to work for long hours, or at overtime, M'hilst 
others are unemployed." 

The reflection is likely to occur to the American 
reader: " Such proposals represent, of course, the 
extreme of all programmes of social reform; to get 
the middle and moderate course one must find a point 
half way between this extreme and the strongly con- 
servative position." 

But the historical background of the Programme 
just summarized does not confirm that view. 

[97] 



Some eighteen months before the elaboration and 
publication of the Labour Party Programme, the 
group of which Mr. George Lansbury is the leader, 
published in the London Herald a tentative pro- 
gramme of Social Reconstruction which may have 
had the effect in some measure of " setting the pace " 
to the Labour Party Programme of eighteen months 
later. Almost every measure and principle forecast 
by Mr. Lansbury's group has been embodied on the 
Labour Party Programme. If this latter was not in- 
spired by the earher one, then both have drawn upon 
a common source represented by the general feeling 
of the Labour world. And that of itself is a por- 
tent. Mr. Lansbury as a Labour leader is neither 
" wild " nor irresponsible. He has very great influ- 
ence in England, due perhaps to a character and per- 
sonality that possesses the quality of securing respect 
from those who disagree with his political and social 
views. The young men who surround him are 
among the ablest of the younger labour leaders in 
England, as the paper which he controls possesses 
some of the keenest and most stimulating of social 
publicists and critics. The programme which that 
paper published in the spring of 19 17 is almost un- 
known in this country, owing perhaps to the fact 
that the Herald, like the London Nation, was for 
long prevented by ^he Censorship authorities in 
Britain from reaching this country. 

Here, textually, are the outstanding economic pro- 
posals of the lud-nshuvy-Herald Programme : 



[98] 



CONSCRIPTION OF WEALTH AND EQUALITY OF 
INCOME 

(a) Expropriation of private landowners 
and capitalists. No compensation beyond an 
ample provision against individual hardship. 

(b) All men and women willing to work to 
be paid, even when their work happens to be 
not needed, just as soldiers are paid when they 
are not fighting. Equal payment for all to be 
the result at which re-organization shall aim. 

(c) Instead of the present capitalistic meth- 
ods of production ov^nership by the state : 

MANAGEMENT BY THE WORKERS. 

This shall be apphed immediately to the case 
of Mines, Railways, Shipping, Shipbuilding, and 
Engineering, Electric Light and Power, Gas 
and Water. 

(d) The National properties in Mines, 
Railways, Shipping, Land so created to be 
leased to the Unions on conditions which will 
ensure every member at present money value a 

MINIMUM REAL INCOME OF ONE POUND A DAY. 

ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE OF ALL MEN AND 
WOMEN 

Until such time as the whole industry of the 
country can be organized upon the basis indi- 
cated above, the workers in industries not em- 
braced in the above list — including those whose 
work is that of the household and the bringing 
up of children — shall be assured a similar 
[99] 



standard of life by one, or a combination of the 
following means : 

(a) A high minimum wage guaranteed by 
the State through a levy upon the profits of un- 
expropriated capitalists. 

(b) Continuation and increase of present 
war allowances to the women and children of 
soldiers' families. 

(c) Increase of maternity benefits and main- 
tenance of children during school age. 

(d) Great increase of old-age pensions be- 
ginning at an earlier age than at present. 

(e) Revision of war and other pensions peri- 
odically in accordance with the Increased cost of 
living. 

(f) Increase of soldiers' pay to Australian, 
Canadian and New Zealand standards. 

This programme definitely enunciates and sup- 
ports three principles to which the attention of the 
American reader Is very especially directed, for they 
will play a part In all future discussions of the new 
social order. They are (i) the social right of the 
community to confiscate — " conscribe " — private 
wealth for the common good, just as the state con- 
scribes the individual hfe for the common good; 
,(2) the social desirability of equality of wealth and 
the economic independence of all men and women 
irrespective of difference in capacity for production; 
(3) the need for the management and control of in- 
dustry by the workers most directly concerned, and 
not by a great centralized body, the state: " Own- 
ership by the State, management by the Workers." 

[100] 



The Implications of these principles are more 
fully discussed In the pages which follow. But ac- 
companying the programme itself Is an outline of 
argument so briefly explanatory of the reasons for 
the last-mentioned principle that it may be intro- 
duced here. The ha.nshury-H erald Programme 
says: 

" Not only must we assure to all our workers 
an income on which a reasonable life can be 
led: we must also create conditions In which 
work ceases to be mere drudgery under a ruling 
class, whether of bureaucrats or of capitalists. 
By taking over the management of Industry the 
workers will be realizing freedom and democ- 
racy in their daily labour. 

" The nationalization of industry will not 
subject the workers to the discipline of a bureau- 
cratic machine, but enable them through the 
Unions to organize production in the Interest 
of all. State ownership of the means of pro- 
duction, balanced by the control of industry by 
organized Labour, offers the best, and Indeed 
the only guarantee of individual freedom in an 
Industrial society. 

*' In the case of the Post Office we already 
have the first half of the principle — ownership 
by the State — and there Is now a powerful 
movement towards the second half — manage- 
ment by the workers." 
This earlier programme is more definite in Its 
political proposals than is that of the Labour Party. 
Like the latter it calls for the complete abolition of 

[loi] 



the House of Lords, but puts forward an alternative 
which is not only interesting in itself but is indica- 
tive of a trend of thought already touched upon in 
these pages. The programme calls, in substitution 
for the House of Lords, for a " Chamber based on 
the representation, not of geographical areas, but of 
occupations, industrial, professional, and domestic, 
Labour and Professional bodies thus becoming a 
constituent part of the country's government." The 
reasons for the proposals are given in these terms : 

" Political and industrial reconstruction cannot be 
considered in complete abstraction from each other, 
and it is essential to any plan, even of political recon- 
struction, that the workers should have their own 
industrial Chamber — representative not of geo- 
graphical areas, like the House of Commons, but of 
occupations, industries and professions. This body 
must sit, not for a few days in every year, but con- 
tinuously.^ It must not merely pass resolutions and 
indicate policies, but have definite powers of initiative 
and control. It will represent the people in their 
capacity of producers, just as the present House of 
Commons is supposed to represent them, and as a 
reformed House of Commons will really represent 
them in the capacity of consumers." 

Incidentally, also, the Lansbury Programme calls 
for the " Abolition of all titles and State-granted hon- 
ours," because " The traffic in titles has become a 

iThls clause has reference to the fact that the "Trade Union 
Congress," generally known as " The Parliament of Labour," meets 
only once a year or so, and sits for only a few days. The plan 
of an Industrial Chamber was evidently, in the minds of the 
draughtsmen of this programme, related to the Trade Union 
Congress. 

[102] 



financial and moral premium upon reactionary poli- 
tics, as well as a subtle form of State bribery." 

Finally, it relates certain demands in foreign policy 
agreed by negotiation (" Equal access by all peoples 
to the trade and raw materials of the world " ; " the 
government of non-European races in Africa to be 
regarded as an international trust, with no exclusive 
advantages to the sovereign state; such populations 
not to be trained for war or subject to conscription 
or servile labours " ; " disarmament by international 
agreement") to domestic policy, in these terms: 

" If democracy is to be a reality in the future, the 
competition for preponderant military power, which 
necessarily militarizes all the nations taking part in 
it, must be brought to an end. But the attempt on 
the part of one nation to create over vast areas of 
the world special reserves for its own trade and 
industry or to block therein the access of other na- 
tions to necessary raw materials, will be certain, 
sooner or later, to be resisted by military means. 
These conflicts, though the workers as a whole never 
benefit from them, are the main source of modern 
wars. The price of peace is equality of economic 
opportunity for all nations big and little. If the 
arming of the black millions of Africa for the pur- 
pose of fighting the white man's quarrels is permitted, 
a new danger as well as a new horror will be added 
to civilization. If a people is not fit to share the 
privileges of the British Empire in the shape of self- 
government it should not be asked to share its bur- 
dens by fighting its wars. Forced fighting, like 
forced labour, is in such case, whatever it may be 

[103] 



elsewhere, undisguised slavery. The only certain 
cure for war is disarmament. If the nations are not 
loaded they will not explode." 



[104] 



CHAPTER III 

IS IT POSSIBLE? 

Most of the measures proposed are actually now in opera- 
tion for the purposes of the war, and have given material re- 
sults far in excess of anything which would have been thought 
possible in August, 1914. The feasibility of Collectivism, 
tested in material terms, has been demonstrated. What is 
now demanded is that that which can be done for purposes 
of war shall also be done for the purposes of peace. The 
political training and scientific spirit of the new Labour 
Party. 

Are the programmes of social reform outlined in 
the preceding chapter feasible in the modern state? 

In considering that question certain main facts 
have to be kept in mind. They are these : 

( 1 ) Almost all the collectivist measures proposed 
are now in operation in Great Britain and in most of 
the European belligerent countries; and after some 
four years of experience they are being applied in 
America. They are more successful in their results 
than any one in August, 19 14, thought they could 
be. The only question is whether what has been 
demonstrated to be feasible enough as a war measure 
can be made workable as a normal peace device. 

(2) The condition which has made possible under 
the impulse of war-needs, measures which might not 
be possible in peace, is the psychological element: the 

[105] 



awakened will and determination of the community, 
in peace time relatively slothful and inert. 

(3) If the mass of the workers find that collectiv- 
ist measures — government control of railroads, 
ships, mines, coal distribution, price fixing — do not 
give the results in peace which have been given in 
war, they are not likely to hesitate to apply compul- 
sions which, unheard of and impossible of applica- 
tion before the war, have now been made entirely 
familiar as war measures. Men have seen the 
State, for the country's protection, compel its citizens 
to surrender or hazard their very lives. Those who 
have submitted to the operation of this rule are not 
likely to hesitate to demand, if circumstances are suf- 
ficiently pressing, that for the country's welfare, the 
rich shall surrender property. Military conscrip- 
tion is likely to be the forerunner of more complete 
and thorough-going conscription of wealth. The re- 
sort to virtual confiscation may render possible meas- 
ures which peace time inertia might otherwise render 
unworkable. 

(4) Millions of young men who have for years 
risked their lives; women who have had to give their 
husbands or lovers, are not likely to be deterred in 
the demands for social reform by the consideration 
that radical measures may prove " disturbing " to 
commerce, or the peace of mind, and social quiet of 
well-to-do folk. The after-the-war psychology of 
the new electorate is likely to favour boldness and 
adventure in social experimentation. 

It Is the first of these facts — the fact that the war 
[106] 



itself has been an economic miracle in its revelation 
of the extent to which state action can secure vastly 
productive economic results — that will be consid- 
ered in this chapter. 

For three generations or so before the war, col- 
lectivism — "the ownership or control by the com- 
munity of the means of production, distribution and 
exchange " — had been a theory advocated by con- 
siderable parties in every civilized country of the 
western world. There had been certain timid and 
piecemeal application of it: gas, water-works, street- 
car lines had become state or municipal enterprises in 
many parts of Europe. In certain countries rail- 
roads had become State concerns; in Australia and 
New Zealand state control of public utilities had been 
pushed further than elsewhere and become generally 
accepted as a principle. But there had been no gen- 
eral application of the principle that profits, and the 
disposal of the surplus above the accepted standard 
of life, belong first to the community and not to the 
individual. Nor had the tentative approaches to 
collectivism In Australia and elsewhere converted the 
world generally to any very lively faith In socialism, 
or any very general recognition of the social principle 
underlying It. Scepticism as to its. feasibility was 
predominant. The power of capital and the insti- 
tution of private property were virtually unshaken. 
Years of agitation In England failed to secure the 
expenditure by the State of a hundred million dollars 
for a national scheme of rehousing for the rural pop- 
ulation, the need for which was crying. A pre-war 

[107] 



government fought for months over an expenditure 
of a million sterling on the medical needs of the 
Insurance Act — an expenditure which the war de- 
mands every two or three hours. Collectivist tend- 
encies were fought as subversive, demoralizing, im- 
practicable. 

Then came the war. Instantly without any sort 
of hesitation, apparently, all the arguments as to the 
impracticability of collectivism were thrown to the 
winds. Within twenty-four hours of the declaration 
of war the British government had done what most 
of the " sober and experienced business men " of the 
country had for years been declaring would be fatal 
to the Nation's efficiency and welfare : the railroads 
had been taken over by the State. But the national- 
ization of the railroads for the time being was a mere 
beginning. The government stepped in and guar- 
anteed vast quantities of Bills of Exchange which 
otherwise would have been worthless and would have 
brought the world's centre of credit to unimaginable 
chaos. The greatest marine insurance system of the 
world was transformed from a private to a national 
enterprise. That too was saved from what, but for 
governmental action, would soon have been hopeless 
bankruptcy. But if the private capitalist was saved, 
so also was he controlled. Capital could no longer 
be invested save as the government should sanc- 
tion investment. The stabilization of foreign ex- 
change became a government concern, and private 
property in foreign securities was ruthlessly " con- 
scribed " for the purpose. The government vir- 
tually took over the coal supply and the shipping. 

[io8] 



It became the sole importer of sugar, wheat, certain 
metals and raw materials. It fixed prices and con- 
trolled distribution; the direction of the woolen, 
leather, clothing, boot and shoe, milling, baking and 
butchering industry passed into its hands. The dis- 
tribution of food and the prevention of waste, on the 
one hand, and want, on the other, became the nation's 
concern. And for all these purposes profits were 
searchingly enquired into. An eighty per cent, tax on 
profits, a tax which, before the war, every business 
man in the country would have declared to be sheer 
robbery, was swallowed " without turning a hair." 
And it all " worked." Not smoothly, yet sufficiently 
well to prevent a collapse of credit and paralysis of 
industry. The city of London, with untold millions 
of worthless commercial paper on its hands, Lanca- 
shire with foreign debts it could not hope to collect, 
were not only tided over; in a few months trade was 
brisker, profits were bigger, than ever. 

Do we yet realize what has happened? 

Here are a series of measures of Nationalization, 
of Collectivism, which for a generation all the " ex- 
perienced business men " had been declaring would 
prove unworkable and disastrous, even when applied 
at leisure in times of profound peace, with due pre- 
meditation and preparation, and the nation able to 
devote itself to the one purpose of rendering the new 
social order workable. The measures are applied, 
not when there is ample time to make proper exami- 
nation and preparation, and when the social and 
industrial functions are working normally, but in a 
period of immense upheaval; when industry is disor- 

[109] 



ganlzed by the withdrawal of men for the army and 
by the sudden demand for unusual materials; when 
transport is choked, and congested; when credit is 
exposed to unprecedented strain. Yet even so, this 
collectivism proves unexpectedly successful. 

We must realize to what extent it was successful; 
at least in a material sense. 

Suppose that in July, 19 14, most of the eminent 
European economists had been collected into a room, 
and some one had addressed them thus : 

" During the next four years Britain will en- 
gage in a war which will withdraw eight to ten 
millions of her workers from active production 
of consumable wealth. That is to say, between 
five and six million soldiers will be called to 
the colors, and between two and three million 
other workers, including a large proportion of 
the women, will be engaged in the manufacture 
of munitions and war material. Yet what re- 
mains of the workers will be able to maintain 
themselves, the country at large and the army 
in food, clothing, fuel and other necessaries at 
a standard of living which will not be on the 
whole below, and will In many cases rise much 
above, the standard they have known In peace 
time. The country as a whole will be more 
prosperous, and wages — real wages — better, 
when it has to keep going a war costing over 
two thousand million sterling a year and de- 
manding an army of six or seven millions, than 
it has been in many periods of the past when 
public expenditure was less than two hundred 
[no] 



millions a year, and when the world was at 
peace and trade booming." 
If that roomful of eminent economists had been 
addressed thus, we know, as a matter of simple fact, 
that every one of them to the last man would have 
said that such a forecast was simply rubbish; that 
economically, the thing was not possible. Yet that 
impossible thing has happened. 

Sir Albert Stanley, speaking in the House of Com- 
mons, and giving on behalf of the government certain 
figures in relation to the nation's production under 
war conditions, said this : 

" In spite of the fact that over five million 
men are now in the army, and consequently have 
changed over from being producers to being 
solely consumers, in spite of this, the total 
industrial output is very little less today than it 
was before the war." 
It is true that any reliable quantitative analysis of 
the present economic situation is extremely difficult 
and unreliable — and that is one reason why it is 
not here attempted. But more compelling reasons 
for not attempting it are these: The most impor- 
tant social conclusions to be drawn from the economic 
experience of the war will be based by the mass of 
the British democracy upon the broad facts as they 
have experienced them in their daily lives, which are 
patent to the world, and not upon complex statistics 
concerning which experts will disagree. In estimat- 
ing the social and political forces which will arise, 
and the legislative experiments which are likely to be 
tried as the result of war experience, we must con- 

[in] 



sider, not so much what the ultimate facts of the 
situation are, as the facts which will most strike the 
imagination of the mass and dictate the opinions 
which they will translate into political action. " Not 
the facts, but men's opinions about the facts are what 
matter," as someone has said. And the impressive 
and striking fact which stands out is the relative suc- 
cess, so far, of these collectlvist measures. 

Evidence as to the influence of that demonstration 
on the minds of the great mass of English workers 
is of course implicit in the programme of the Labour 
Party. But the very arguments just presented may 
be found outlined in the Lansbury-i/^r«W Pro- 
gramme from which quotation has already been 
made, and which ante-dated the Labour Party Pro- 
gramme by some eighteen months. The former pro- 
gramme centred round two chief Items : a demand for 
the complete " conscription of Wealth," which, of 
course. Is a synonym for expropriation, and for 
equality of income, the first step to which Is a demand 
for a national minimum wage of a pound (five dol- 
lars) a day. 

The authors of the programme evidently realized 
that the feasibility of such a figure demanded some 
explanation, which they furnished In these terms: 

As to the practicability of the minimum In- 
come Indicated above, the economic facts of the 
war prove conclusively that a minimum real in- 
come of a pound a day, present value, for every 
worker Is quite attainable. The country is 
spending eight millions a day on the war alone. 
Very nearly the whole of the wealth necessary 

[112] 



for the support of the civilian population, is 
created by the labour of not much more than 
eight million workers. In peace times there 
are not more than fifteen million available 
workers, including men, women and children. 
More than half of this number is now with- 
drawn for the army or unproductive army work, 
like munitions. Making every allowance for 
such of the army as do productive work, the 
support of the army and the country now falls 
upon half the usual available workers, the half 
which includes the older people and the children. 
This calculation is not seriously affected by the 
argument that we are " living on credit." It is 
not true, in the sense that we are consuming 
wealth that we are not now creating, save to a 
very small extent. Although the Government 
may pay for its purchases by money borrowed 
from the capitalist, that Is merely in order to 
preserve the capitalist system. The actual 
material — munitions, clothing, etc., — is made 
by the workers now, not •taken by some magic 
from past or future stores. And while it may 
be true that we are making war material instead 
of renewing necessary plant, we have official 
assurance that that is only to a small extent. 
The experience of the war shows that, given a 
large and insistent demand — ensured during 
the last three years by the immense consumption 
of war — the wealth necessary to satisfy It can 
be produced far more easily than was generally 
supposed. The high consumption ensured dur- 
[113] 



ing the last three years by war, must after the 
war, be ensured by the high standard of living 
of the workers. Those now busy destroying 
good houses in France and Belgium must after 
the war be kept busy building better ones; and 
in all the work of readjustment and reconstruc- 
tion necessary to ensure food and raw materials 
and a continually increasing productivity in 
order to meet the continually increasing con- 
sumption of the workers. 
Some of the above figures are open to challenge, 
but not very seriously. There remains for the time 
being unshaken the general conclusion, namely: that 
the degree to which it is possible to increase produc- 
tion by widespread co-ordination of the national re- 
sources in material and energy, even in existing con- 
ditions of education and training, is immensely 
greater than anyone has heretofore thought possi- 
ble. The fact is that with over five millions with- 
drawn from production altogether (soldiers) ; with 
over two millions employed in the manufacture of 
goods (munitions) which are destroyed (do not add, 
that is, to the standard of life) ; the remaining work- 
ers can, by their labour, supply, not only a vast quan- 
tity of rapidly destroyed material (other than muni- 
tions) needed in modern war, but maintain for the 
above six or seven millions, for themselves, and for 
the remainder of the population, a standard of living 
higher on the whole than that which was obtained 
when millions were available for productive labour. 
It is, of course, true that many now work at a 
tension and for hours that would not be possible 

[114] 



normally. But It is also true that much of the la- 
bour from which the country's wealth is now being 
derived is " amateur," and that the national organ- 
ization, owing to the rapidity with which adjustments 
had to be made, is muddled; so that the deduction in 
the matter of hours which should be made in at- 
tempting to arrive at a possible normal standard 
may be offset by the increased efficiency which would 
come with time by the development of amateurs into 
** efficients," and by the elimination of present fric- 
tion and waste. 

It is true, also, as the argument quoted admits, 
that we are now consuming wealth, which would — 
and must — in ordinary times go to replace ex- 
hausted or to furnish new capital; that is to say, to 
make good depreciation and create new machinery 
and material for future production. 

It is true, also, that a small proportion of the 
goods consumed are not either made by the country 
or obtained in exchange for goods it is now making, 
but are obtained (or were for a period obtained) in 
return for the surrender of past accumulated savings 
in the shape of foreign securities. 

Making every allowance for these items the great 
and astounding fact remains that with something like 
half of the workers of the country withdrawn from 
any work which contributes to their own support, 
they and the whole country are maintained at a 
higher standard of living than before,^ while there is 

lit may be true that now, in the summer of 1918, the English 
population is beginning to suffer physically for lack of food. But 
certainly that has not been true during the preceding four years. 

[115] 



furnished, in addition, the immense amount of mate- 
rial daily needed for destruction in war. 

It is obvious that if the two million munition work- 
ers were producing consumable goods, instead of war 
material, and the soldiers were also working instead 
of fighting, the amount of total wealth produced 
could be enormously increased — probably about 
doubled — and the standard of living correspond- 
ingly still further raised. 

Perhaps the commonest confusion in judging of 
the economic miracle of the war is that touched upon 
in the programme just quoted from. We are told 
that the people are still well fed and clothed, and the 
general standard of living is as high as, or higher 
than, it was before the vast waste of war began, 
because we are " living on credit "; we are not pay- 
ing for the food we are consuming. 

A moment's reflection will show one that a whole 
country, except in respect of the things that it gets 
abroad and pays for by selling securities or creating 
new foreign loans, cannot " live on credit." 

All the vast stores, shells, munitions needed by 
our soldiers, as well as the materials for our own 
sustenance, have not been collected in some wonder- 
ful way from the future. They have been made, 



" now. 



What the complicated system of loans and credit 
really means is that, though we have been quite pre- 
pared for the purposes of the war to destroy many 
things — life, freedom, Parliamentary government 
— we preserve capitalism. 

When we borrow the money of the capitalist, in- 
[ii6] 



stead of taking It, as we do the lives of the people, it 
merely means that the possessors of money have 
agreed not to call at the time upon the country to 
provide the things which the surplus wealth would 
otherwise call for — provided that the country will 
give an undertaking to provide those things in still 
larger degree at some later period. 

It is curious that in the discussion of after-the-war 
problems the indisputable facts above indicated are 
not merely overlooked, but disguised. One of the 
most distinguished authorities on the problem of 
poverty in England devoted a series of articles dur- 
ing 1917 to urging the crying need of increased pro- 
duction if the wherewithal is to be found to feed and 
clothe the men when they come back from the war. 

But if we can clothe and feed and doctor and 
amuse, an agricultural labourer, say, while he is a 
soldier, at the rate of something like three hundred 
pounds a year per head, when he and his fellow- 
soldiers are doing nothing towards their own sup- 
port, why should it not be possible to do so still 
more effectually when they themselves — normally 
the chief producers of our wealth — are once more 
by their productive labour adding to the common 
stock ? 

The economist just mentioned writes on the need 
of grappling with the question of preventable dis- 
ease, which of itself, he points out, cuts the possible 
production of the working classes nearly In half; he 
adumbrates new plans of more economical distribu- 
tion, the recasting of our means, of transport, and 
much else. 

[117] 



All this, of course, is very true and important, 
but surely the emphasis on it has the effect of with- 
drawing attention from the lesson that, with our 
existing means of transport and existing loss from 
preventable disease — without any reformation in 
such matters as these — we have managed, with 
something like half the workers that we had before 
the war, to secure, not merely a higher standard of 
living, but to provide as well all the vast material 
needed for the armies at the front. 

The fact shows that productivity was not main- 
tained at anything like its highest point, or that its 
benefits were not reaching the general population; 
that the very imperfect means we did possess — with 
all the deductions made on the score of bad health, 
defective education and training, and the rest of it — 
ought to have given much better results than they 
did; were somewhere so ill-adjusted that they were 
not giving perhaps more than half the output, in 
terms of national benefit, which the stimulus of the 
war has produced. 

This question will remain : If the collectivist sys- 
tem can succeed even relatively when applied amidst 
the strain and stress of a war of unparalleled dimen- 
sions, shall we be able, when the old system has been 
more or less restored, and when the workers suffer 
— as under the old system millions did suffer — from 
hard times, unemployment, anxiety, privation, to per- 
suade post-bellum generations that betterment by 
state adoption of socialist, collectivist measures is 
unrealizable? 

Xhe main argument of the situation is already bc- 
[ii8] 



ing conceded In previously hostile quarters. So con- 
servative an exponent of public opinion as the London 
Times published in 19 16 a series of articles called 
" The Elements of Reconstruction " — articles later 
reprinted with an endorsement of Viscount Milner, 
one of the five war " dictators " of England — which 
definitely acknowledged the trend towards State So- 
cialism. " The bulk of reasonable men in the Em- 
pire," says the Times expert, whom Lord Milner 
blesses, " have come over to the primary Socialist 
assertion that food production, transport, all the big 
industrial enterprises, are matters, not for the profit- 
seeking of private ownership, but for public adminis- 
tration." 

Nor do all American experts miss the portent. 
One of the leading spokesmen for American finance 
is Mr. Frank Vanderlip, President of the National 
City Bank. Speaking before the National Bankers' 
Association at the Chicago Bankers' Club even as 
early as 19 16, Mr. Vanderlip said: 

" State Socialism in Europe may develop problems the 
like of which have never entered our minds. We may have 
to meet collective buying, state-aided industries, forms of 
government control of ocean-borne commerce, and novel fac- 
tors in international finance. There may come out of the 
war changes in the forms of government that will have 
profound and worldwide influence." 

The situation is likely to work In men's minds by 
calling attention to collectivlst experiments which but 
for the war would have affected opinion only slowly 
and to small extent. Thus we find Mr. Elwood 

[119] 



Mead calling attention in the Metropolitan Maga- 
zine to Australian State Socialism in these terms: 

" We have only to compare the limited governmental ac- 
tivities of this country with those of democratic Australia 
and New Zealand to realize that it is not political freedom, 
but our crude and unworkable legislative methods and organ- 
ization that are most at fault. Popular control in those 
countries is more direct than here, but there the political 
side of government has been subordinated to its industrial 
and social activities. 

"In those countries the Government (State or National) 
owns and operates the railways, the telegraph and telephone 
systems. It owns and operates nearly all street-car systems, 
all express lines and the letter and parcel posts. It owns and 
operates nearly all irrigation works and a large number of 
water works which supply cities and towns. It exercises 
control over and finances water works operated by the State 
or by municipalities — almost none are privately owned. 
The State also owns and operates coal mines, and saw-mills 
in State forests. This is a recent extension of State activity, 
arising out of the need of placing a check on the prices charged 
by coal and timber monopolies. The State owns many of the 
wharves and docks of the seaports. It owns and operates 
ship-building yards and cold storage warehouses, thus placing 
the small producer of fruit, meat, and butter on an equality 
with the great shippers. It makes contracts with the steam- 
ship lines for the transportation of perishable products to 
Europe. It inspects all shipments of butter and meat and 
fresh fruit and requires them to conform to certain stand- 
ards. This is done so that the unscrupulous shipper may 
not destroy the market of the reputable one. As a result of 
this activity, freights have been lowered and service improved 
until now the Australian producer ships butter 12,000 miles 
for one cent per pound and fresh meat the same distance for 
three-quarters of a cent, and the owner of a dozen eggs living 
miles in the interior can transfer them to government cold 

[120] 



storage, have them sold in London, and get the proceeds. 
Australia is three times the distance from London that 
Eureka, California, is from New York, but the Australian 
dairyman can ship his butter to London for one-third what 
it costs the one in California to get his to New York. 

" One of the fields where the credit and co-ordinating 
influence of our government ought to be exercised, is in the 
planning and financing of works for municipal water sup- 
plies. A study of the Australian system and its results 
would leave no doubt about this. Here each little town has 
to plan and finance its system. There the State maintains 
a body of expert engineers who help to prepare plans and 
estimates of cost and of revenues needed to meet expenses and 
sinking fund requirements, and when these plans are per- 
fected a State bond issue provides the money needed by all the 
towns and cities of the State. As a result, there are no com- 
missions to bond brokers, no discounts on bonds, and the 
interest rate has for many years been only 4 per cent. Only 
those who have financed water works bond issues of towns 
with from 2,500 to 5,000 people can fully realize how much 
the people of Australia save and how much the people of 
American towns pay as a result of this difference in govern- 
mental policy. 

" State forest areas are numerous and widely distributed. 
New areas are being planted. Coal mines are leased, not 
sold. Thrift is encouraged by a State Savings Bank, where, 
in addition to the interest paid, depositors share in the profits. 
What this means to wage-earners is shown by the fact that 
nearly one-half of all the people in the Commonwealth are 
depositors. Out of a total population of 1,400,000 in the 
State of Victoria, 735,000 are depositors in the State Savings 
Bank. Each State has a comprehensive, generous, and suc- 
cessful system for aiding poor men to buy farms and clerks 
and mechanics in cities to pay for homes. In the city of 
Victoria, 4,000 families have been able to secure farms in 
the country, and 6,000 workmen their homes in the city who 
could never have attempted this without State aid and direc- 
tion. 

[121] 



** The best part of this State activity is that it has not 
been handed down from above like that of socialized Ger- 
many ; it has been created and is maintained by the free vote 
of the people. They have incurred this great responsibility 
and heavy expense in the belief that there can be no really 
free society, no genuine democracy so long as want and 
misery exist in the midst of abundance," ^ 

But more significant than newspaper or magazine 
writing as an admission of the trend of events is the 
character of American war legislation itself. A 
previous chapter has Indicated how narrowly it is 
paralleling British war legislation in all that relates 
to railways, ships, coal, wheat, price-control and 
taxation. The Revenue Bill now ^ before Congress, 
if it passes in Its present form, which seems likely, 
will be a very big step towards enforcement of the 
principle outlined by the British Labour Party that 
the taxation of Inheritance should start from the 
point of asking " what Is the maximum amount that 
any rich man at death should be permitted to divert, 
by his will, from the national exchequer, which should 
normally be the heir to all private riches In excess of 
a quite moderate amount by way of family provi- 
sion." The bill is described as forecasting " the vir- 
tual confiscation of big estates." Estates of over 
ten million dollars pay forty per cent, and one may 
doubt whether that will be the final figure.^ In the 

1 Quoted in "State Socialism," pp. XXII-XXIII, by Walling 
and Laidler. 

2 August, 1918. 

3 The rates on inheritance taxes agreed upon after an exemption 
of $50,cx)o are: 

$ 50,000 to $ 150,000, 6 per cent. 
150,000 to 250,000, 9 per cent. 

[122] 



case of the income tax, incomes between one hun- 
dred thousand and two hundred thousand dollars 
pay fifty per cent.; and incomes above five million 
dollars seventy-five per cent. And this in the case of 
a country which for long resisted any income tax 
whatever as inquisitorial and intolerable! 

It is necessary at this point again to warn the 
reader against a misapprehension. As pointed out 
at some length in the first chapter of this section, 
these triumphs of state control are not Socialism. 
Still less do they constitute of themselves a social 
condition which the workers in Britain regard as de- 
sirable or even normally tolerable. British workers 
are under no illusions on that point. They are per- 
fectly aware that what Mr. J. A. Hobson calls " Aus- 
tralian Prussianism " might well become a system of 
State Capitalism (as distinguished from State So- 
cialism) in which the individual employer whom the 
worker knew under the old system, emerges as a 
State official with powers even enlarged. Books like 
Mr. Vandervelde's " Socialisme Contre I'fitat " 
show a similar trend on the Continent. It suffices 

250,000 to 450,000, 12 per cent. 

450,000 to 1,000,000, 15 per cent. 
1,000,000 to 2,000,000, 18 per cent. 
2,000,000 to 3,000,000, 21 per cent. 
3,000,000 to 4,000,000, 24 per cent. 
4,000,000 to 5,000,000, 27 per cent. 
5,000,000 to 8,000,000, 30 per cent. 
8,000,000 to 10,000,000, 35 per cent. 
Above $10,000,000, 40 per cent. 
Life insurance policies above $40,000 are included in the in- 
heritance tax for the first time. The Bill of course may be modi- 
fied in the Senate. But even so, these figures agreed upon in the 
House, mark a tendency. 

[123] 



here to register the fact that the British workers for 
the most part fully realize that these increases of 
" Etatisme " might be used either as a means to- 
wards a truly socialized self-governing community, 
or a State in which individual freedom has disap- 
peared and self-rule become a fiction. 

The ultimate outcome depends upon the fashion 
in which the demonstrated possibility of employing 
the community's power for the co-ordination of pro- 
duction and distribution, is used. The war has ac- 
complished the necessary preliminary to any form of 
Socialism: It has demonstrated In material terms the 
economic feasibility of the method of common owner- 
ship or control of the means of production and dis- 
tribution. 

The danger that the power gained by the State in 
war may be used to the ends of enslavement is a 
very real one ; and the fight between those who hope 
to use collectivism as an instrument of real liberation, 
and those who hope to make of it a means whereby 
the Nation-State may assume still greater powers of 
coercion and repression, will be a bitter one. Even 
with every good will and vigilance the way will not 
always be clear. But quite fully does the Labour 
Party realize that knowledge and science are essen- 
tial, even where good will is present; still more when 
there is Interested opposition: 

" The Labour Party has no belief In any of 
the problems of the world being solved by 
Good Will alone. Good Will without Knowl- 
edge is Warmth without Light. Especially In 
all the complexities of politics, in the still unde- 
[124] 



veloped Science of Society, the Labour Party 
stands for increased study, for the scientific 
investigation of each succeeding problem, for 
the deliberate organization of research, and for 
a much more rapid dissemination among the 
whole people of all the science thrt exists. And 
it is perhaps specially the Labour Party that has 
the duty of placing this Advancement of Science 
in the forefront of its political programme. 
What the Labour Party stands for in all fields 
of life, is, essentially. Democratic Co-operation; 
and Co-operation involves a common purpose 
which can be agreed to; a common plan which 
can be explained and discussed, and such a 
measure of success in the adaptation of means 
to ends as will ensure a common satisfaction. 
An autocratic Sultan may govern without science 
if his whim is law. A Plutocratic Party may 
choose to ignore science, if it is heedless whether 
its pretended solutions of social problems that 
may win political triumphs ultimately succeed or 
fail. But no Labour Party can hope to main- 
tain its position unless its proposals are, in fact, 
the outcome of the best Political Science of its 
time; or to fulfil its purpose unless that science 
is continually wresting new fields from human 
ignorance. Hence, although the purpose of the 
Labour Party must, by the law of its being, re- 
main for all time unchanged, its Policy and its 
Programme will, we hope, undergo a perpetual 
development, as knowledge grows, and as new 
phases of the social problem present themselves, 
[125] 



In a continually finer adjustment of our meas- 
ures to our ends. If Law Is the Mother of 
Freedom, Science, to the Labour Party, must be 
the Parent of Law." 



[126] 



CHAPTER IV 

THE IDEAL OF A REAL DEMOCRACY AND " A NEW 
SOCIAL ORDER " 

What is the feeling behind the declaration that the old 
order is done with, and that there will be no attempts to 
patch it up, and that an entirely " New Social Order " must 
replace it? Mainly that mere improvement of the material 
condition of the workers, leaving unchanged their moral 
status as a servile class, will not suffice. The re-assertion of 
egalitarian ideas. The imponderabilia in the motive forces 
of Labour Politics. Why are some Socialists lukewarm to- 
wards or hostile to the war? The emergence of reactionary 
forces in war time. State Socialism not synonymous with 
Freedom: nor with Peace. Will a more socialized order 
necessarily make for a warless world? The relation of 
Socialism to internationalism. 

The Programme of the British Labour Party says : 

" The view of the Labour Party is that what has 
to be reconstructed after the war is not this or that 
government department, or this or that piece of 
social machinery; but so far as Britain is concerned, 
Society itself. . . . We of the Labour Party recog- 
nize, in the present world catastrophe . . . the cul- 
mination and collapse of a distinctive industrial civil- 
ization, which the workers will not seek to recon- 
struct. ... On the contrary we shall do our utmost 
to see that it is buried with the millions whom it has 

[127] 



done to death. . . . We must ensure that what is 
presently to be built up is a new social order based, 
not on fighting, but on fraternity — not on the com- 
petitive struggle for the means of bare life, but on 
deliberately planned co-operation in production and 
distribution for the benefit of all who participate by 
hand or brain — not on the utmost possible inequality 
of riches, but on a systematic approach towards a 
healthy equality of material circumstances. . . . 

*' What marks off this party most distinctly from 
any of the other political parties is its demand for the 
full and genuine adoption of the principle of democ- 
racy. ... It demands the progressive elimination 
from the control of industry of the private capitalist, 
individual, or joint stock; and the setting free of all 
who work, whether by hand or brain, for the service 
of the community, and the community only. . . ." 

The Lansbury-//fr^/^ Programme of an earlier 
date says : 

" Not only must we assure to all our workers an 
income on which a reasonable life can be led; we must 
also create conditions in which work ceases to be mere 
drudgery under a ruling class, whether of bureaucrats 
or of capitalists. By taking over the management 
of industry the workers will be realizing freedom and 
democracy in their daily labour. The nationaliza- 
tion of industry will not subject the workers to the dis- 
cipline of a bureaucratic machine, but will enable them 
through the Trade Unions to organize production 

[128] 



in the interest of all. State ownership of the means 
of production, balanced by the control of industry by 
organized labour, offers the best, and, indeed, the 
only guarantee of individual freedom in an industrial 
society." 

This programme classifies the demand for certain 
reforms in education and for a " free social life " 
under the general sub-heading of " The Opportunity 
to Enjoy Life," and explains : 

" We put education under ' enjoyment of life ' be- 
cause it is clear that the proper end of education is the 
proper enjoyment of life. The present outcry for 
better scientific and technical training, for the endow- 
ment of research In processes which may be adapted 
to commercial ends, and for similar so-called ' edu- 
cational ' developments, will miss the real educa- 
tional end if, by centring exclusively upon mechani- 
cal or industrial eflUcIency, it disregards the necessity 
for leisure and enjoyment. The problem of educa- 
tion Is not how to contribute to the production of 
greater material wealth, but how to nourish In every 
individual, the desire for a full free life (since with- 
out that desire there Is no hope of social progress) 
and the capacity for enjoying a full free life (since 
without that capacity social progress is unmeaning) . 
That part of education in this country which is known 
as ' higher ' has, in spite of its narrowness, at least 
one good point : It aims at being a liberal education — 
an education which Is an end In itself, and not a mere 
means to ' efliclency.' This aim must be kept in view 
by education of all trades and all kinds." 

[129] 



The first chapter of this section described the na- 
ture of the movement in England for the introduction 
of democracy into industry, into the daily lives of 
the workmen, that is ; the growing demand that " self- 
government " shall mean, not merely the right to 
have a part in determining who the pohtical rulers of 
the state shall be — a matter which, when all is said 
and done, is often one of complete indifference to 
the worker — but, much more important, who his 
economic rulers shall be ; who shall control his work- 
a-day world, the right to have a part in the govern- 
ment of his occupation and its conditions. How the 
various projects of Syndicalism and Guild Sociahsm 
propose to give effect to that has already been briefly 
indicated. 

What is here considered is the great moral impetus 
given to this general movement towards industrial 
democracy by certain forces which the war itself has 
brought into being in England, and which, since they 
are the outcome of war measures and objects now 
occupying a large place in American life, are likely 
sooner or later to operate in this country as well. 

Let us note first the declared aims of the war, in 
this connection. 

The justification of the war Is that It is necessary 
for the preservation of democracy, the right of men 
to rule themselves, to determine their own fate, and 
not be the obedient puppets of a special autocratic 
class governing by right of inherited authority. 

But certain circumstances of this war have shown 
that a return to the old social order which existed 
in 1 9 14 would mean that very thing, however com- 

[130] 



pletely Germany might be beaten. Modern Indus- 
trial conditions deliver the great mass of the people 
into the power of a small class, an industrial autoc- 
racy who wield that power, not by virtue of any right 
which has been democratically conferred upon them 
by the governed, but by a privilege held by inherit- 
ance, the result of accident, or even chicanery and 
anti-social fraud. 

Indiscriminate rhetoric has robbed the statement 
of this undoubted fact of its power to strike our 
imagination. But it is, nevertheless, a fact, the dra- 
matic importance of which has been brought home by 
the war. Mere political democracy had so failed 
to give to the millions who worked in our factories, 
mines, and fields, any real control over their own 
daily lives as to make the parade of political free- 
dom often a cruel irony. The miner or mill hand, 
supporting a family on the edge of poverty, in terror 
of illness or unemployment, subject to dismissal by a 
bad-tempered overseer, compelled to go humbly to 
the manager or employer who held over him in such 
circumstances, the power of life and death almost, 
found no redress in the fact that he could at election 
times vote for the Liberal Candidate as against the 
Conservative — or the Republican as against the 
Democratic. Throughout great provinces a few 
men by their control of industrial conditions had a 
power over the daily lives of millions, immeasurably 
greater than that which, in fact, the Kaiser exercises 
over the lives of Polish or Alsatian peasants. 

The question arose: Is the aim of "A World 
Safe for Democracy " compatible with a social order 

[131] 



in which real control in the things that often matter 
most — the conditions of work-a-day life — is given 
into the hands of a little class of favoured individ- 
uals, an industrial autocracy, as truly as pohtical 
power is held by the political autocracy of Prussia? 
Does government of the people by the people mean 
a condition in which the very means of sustenance 
are controlled by a tiny minority holding irresponsi- 
ble power? In which power, prestige, leisure, cul- 
ture, social deference is given to a small economic 
autocracy; while the much larger class are to be con- 
tent to accept narrow and cramping conditions of 
life, and the stigma of social inferiority? Can de- 
mocracy, self-government, mean anything when the 
real power in the community is held by a small class 
outside the great mass of workers? 

Just recently the American Federation of Labour, 
in its Thirty-eighth Annual Convention, virtually re- 
pudiated the Programme of the British Labour 
Party, denouncing its authors as theorists and poli- 
ticians, and re-affirmed the Federation's intention to 
adhere to " pure and simple Trade Unionism." The 
action furnishes additional evidence of the diver- 
gence of temper between European and American 
labour, and, it is to be feared, of a grave failure on 
the part of many American Trade Unionists to under- 
stand the spirit, the motives, the real nature of the 
forces animating the newer movement in Great 
Britain. 

The divergence arises perhaps from the difficulty 
which American unionists seem to experience in giv- 
ing due weight to certain non-material motives in the 

[132] 



European movement, motives not directly related to 
questions of hours and wages. The charges of 
" theorizing " and highbrowism seem to be the ex- 
pression of impatience at the introduction of policies 
not easily defensible in terms of immediate advan- 
tage in wages and conditions. The plain implication 
of the St. Paul decision is that the one object of the 
workers is a progressive improvement of material 
conditions, and that if the largest immediate result in 
that respect is to be obtained by a form of Trade 
Unionism which limits itself strictly to piece-meal ac- 
tion on points of wages and hours and by renouncing 
any attempt at wider social changes, then that renun- 
ciation is fully justified. The assumption is, that pro- 
vided the material condition of the workers Is good 
enough, there is no moral objection to the retention 
of the existing social and economic order, of the 
workers' position as a separate class therein, and its 
relationship to present political and social institutions. 
But the chief impulse behind the development of 
the last year or two in British labour politics does 
not come, merely or mainly perhaps, from a desire 
for Improvement in material conditions. That de- 
velopment has followed a steady rise In wages, and 
the promise of automatic improvement In conditions. 
The main motive force of the latest development, Is 
the impulse to a real democracy — self-government, 
not alone in the political but in the industrial and 
social sphere; equality, not only political but social 
and cultural; and, for the great mass of the people, a 
degree of control over the conditions of their daily 
lives which no mere Trade Union stipulations con- 

[133] 



cernlng hours and wages can give. Into the words 
" democracy and self-government " have been poured 
a content — in part as a by-product of the war it- 
self—which a few years ago in England they did 
not have, and which the American Trade Unionist 
seems hardly to suspect.^ 

It is, of course, fatally easy to overlook the force 
of a motive in others which cannot be measured or 
even expressed in material terms. The difficulty of 
giving weight to these moral values is precisely what 
makes Irish, and certain other nationalisms, so in- 
comprehensible to many Englishmen (and Ameri- 
cans) and has so far made the Irish problem insolu- 
ble ; and which, to the German, makes certain motives 
of his enemies incomprehensible.^ 

Yet the war itself is inexplicable and meaningless 
unless we give a large place in its underlying causes 
to certain moral imponderabilia: the struggle of Ser- 
bians for nationality, of Belgians for the respect of 
their independence, things we cannot evaluate simply 
in economic terms. And the curious thing is that 

^ " The new Labour movement has gone beyond bread-and-butter 
problems. ... It is working for something other than increased 
wages, shortened hours, or improved sanitary conditions. It wants 
to control its own destiny. It is working for a share in manage- 
ment. . . . The worker begins to suspect that there will be less 
liberty for him under mere State control. ... As it is self-direction 
that he wants, he looks for it to direct co-operation with his own 
mates. He is harking back to the self-governed industry. He wants 
to substitute Industrial Unionism for Trade Unionism, and hankers 
after a Guild which is to supersede the Trade Union proper alto- 
gether by amalgamating employer and employed." — Editorial, 
Manchester Guardian, June 27, 19 17. 

- It is necessary to explain that this does not justify every sen- 
timental manifestation of Nationalism, which is sometimes as anti- 
social, especially in its chauvinistic developments, as competitive 
industrialism itself? 

[134] 



the reality of a motive which the American Trade 
Unionist will admit in the case of a Belgian or semi- 
barbarian Serbian, he boggles at in the case of Eng- 
lish working men with a thousand years of bitter 
social and political struggle behind them. The 
average American would repel with indignation the 
plea that Belgian resistance was " highbrow " or high 
falutin', or based on foolish dreams and theories, 
because, once settled down under German rule, Bel- 
gium would be as well administered as under King 
Albert; that wages would be as high as in Germany; 
that the workers would benefit by all the German 
labour legislation and Brussels be as clean and well 
kept as Munich. As little would a New Yorker — ■ 
even an antl-Tammanyite — listen to the argument 
that New York would be better governed by one of 
the famous trained professional mayors from Ger- 
many than by Judge Hylan. In such cases we recog- 
nize readily enough that good government can never 
be a substitute for self government, nor ejfficlency 
for democracy. 

But the American Trade Unionist Is shutting his 
eyes to this truth when he disparages the demand of 
workers in Europe for wide reaching social changes 
that do not bear immediately upon the improvement 
of wages and hours, and describes them as " high- 
brow fancies." The European worker is merely do- 
ing what the American worker — If the war makes 
any equivalent demand upon him — will ultimately 
do : attempt to translate into terms of his own daily 
intimate life, the proclaimed objects of the war. 
The western democracies are fighting, and hundreds 

[135] 



of thousands of Americans will give their lives, in 
order that Belgians, Serbians, Russians may con- 
serve the right to rule themselves ; in order that they 
— and we — may be secure from the power of an 
autocracy constituting itself virtual master of the 
world and depriving the mass of freedom. 

If we really take that objective seriously, we must 
all, in the Western Democracies sooner or later, be 
led, as the British workers have been led, to ask 
with deepening insistence: Are not we too within 
the hands of an autocracy of our own, with a power 
in our state as real, though exercised in a different 
way, as that of the military autocracy of Prussia? 

What really was the position of the mass of our 
workers in respect of freedom and self government 
under the old economic order, and what will it be 
after the war, if working class organization con- 
fines its activities within the limits of the older Trade 
Unionism? 

The workers have learned chat the mere right 
to vote for one political party as against another 
is no real guarantee of freedom when both parties, 
even when sincerely anxious to execute the will of the 
mass, are helpless in the grip of a social and economic 
system really controlled by a power outside politics. 
But not only does merely political democracy, acting 
within the limits of the old social and economic order, 
give the workman no real control over that power, 
but in grappling with all its ramifications Trade 
Unionism of the older type is almost as helpless; 
it is powerless to enable the workers really to deter- 
mine the quality and form of the society of which 

[136] 



they are the greater part. The old Unionism can 
give them greater comfort, attenuate isolated tyr- 
annies; it cannot make them aught but a special 
servile class, socially and culturally inferior to a 
small, privileged, and normally, immensely powerful 
caste. 

What are the facts? The present position of 
private property and capital, and their relationship 
to our political, industrial, legal, social, educational 
(in which is included of course, such elements as the 
newspaper, the " movie " and the drama) religious 
and eleemosynary institutions, gives real control in 
the things that often matter most, into the hands of 
this little class of favoured Individuals — an eco- 
nomic autocracy — as truly as political control is 
given to the political autocracy of Prussia. This 
economic autocracy has power, prestige, leisure, cul- 
ture, self-development, social deference, while the 
great mass must be content with an entirely different 
quality of life, as inferior culture, to train their chil- 
dren to be the mere servants and handmaidens of that 
autocracy. Does it alter the condition for the better 
that it should be open for an Infinitesimal production 
of the great mass, (the system itself precludes any 
general movement) usually by the exercise of excep- 
tional self-assertlveness, a capacity ruthlessly to push 
aside weaker competitors, to exchange a servile con- 
dition for one in which they will profit by social 
injustice? 

The workers in Britain have decided that this it not 
democracy; that no mere improvement in material 
condition can purchase acquiescence in it, or be ac- 

[137] 



cepted as a substitute for a more real division of 
power — for self-government, as desirable in itself 
apart from any material test; that moral helotry can- 
not be made acceptable by making it comfortable. 

Perhaps we can summarize the situation by saying 
that the demand of the British democracy is that the 
mass shall be partners instead of servants, even 
though as partners their material condition is not 
better than it would be as servants. We know as a 
matter of simple fact that in the case of nine in- 
dividuals out of ten in our society just that kind of 
motive is often the predominant one. To ignore 
it, is to ignore the most powerful social force around 
us. It is destined perhaps to be In the Industrial 
field, what nationalism has been in the field of in- 
ternational politics. It may be *' unpractical." So 
was the determination of the Belgians to defend their 
national Independence. 

In this problem of the relation of the war and its 
objects to the aims of democracy certain questions 
must suggest themselves to the American observer 
of democratic movements in England and France. 
The Impression is certainly general in America that 
the number of those in the labour movement whom 
Americans would probably describe as lukewarm to 
the war, Is very much larger than In labour circles in 
this country. Why should the Radical, the thorough- 
going social reformer, the protagonist of popular 
right and of democracy be anti-war at all? Why 
should these of all people be less alive than others 
to the danger of the domination of a power which 

[138] 



is the most anti-popular, anti-Radical and autocratic 
in the world, and the triumph of which would render 
the success of the Radical millennium impossible? 
On the face of it it would seem that it is precisely 
the revolutionary socialist who should be most con- 
cerned in the destruction of the most anti-revolu- 
tionary force of Christendom. Usually such a 
question is not answered by either party to the dis- 
cussion in any way that is at all convincing. 

The explanation, implicit in the prevailing atti- 
tude towards English and French Labour opinion, 
that these anti-mihtarists and radicals definitely de- 
sire the triumph of German mlhtarism and autocracy 
and are facing popular hostility — to say nothing of 
legal penalties — in order to work for the subjuga- 
tion of their country to the Prussian conqueror, is 
so silly that it would never be advanced if it had 
to be clearly formulated. Yet that, and nothing 
else, is the plain implication of most of the denuncia- 
tion of British and French minority opinion now 
current in the American press. On the other hand 
the socialist proposition that the war is a capitalist 
plot engineered by Wall Street for the special inter- 
ests of a little group of jfinanciers, will hardly bear 
more examination. It belongs to the order of those 
social " myths " of which M. Sorel wrote : one of 
those fantasies necessary for the purpose of creating 
a group of motives with a basis in pugnacity and 
hostility to another group, and of providing a simple 
and stirring battle cry. But never so much as in the 
case of the entrance of the United States into the war 
did it have less basis in fact. American capitalism 

[139] 



with uncontrolled profits would have done Immensely 
better out of the war with America as a neutral than 
with America as a belligerent fixing prices and — 
introducing state Socialism. 

For, as we have seen, it is one of the contradictions 
of the situation that this war towards which certain 
socialists are so cold, has accomplished over-night, 
as it were, a development of state socialism and col- 
lective actions towards social reform which mere agi- 
tation would not have accomplished in half a century. 
And — a further contradiction — towards that 
State Socialism neither capitalism nor imperialism 
has shown itself particularly hostile. Yet in the 
country whose government since the war has gone 
farther than any other along the road of sociahsm 
the revolutionary movement among socialists is grow- 
ing apace. Such a situation shows very clearly how 
the old lines of cleavage, putting individualist capital- 
ism as representing the bourgeois or privileged classes 
on the one hand and on the other state socialism 
as representing popular aspiration and democratic 
reform, has all but completely broken down. 

That such is an altogether false demarcation of 
the rival forces Germany herself before the war had 
taught. State Socialism, a widespread " nationaliza- 
tion " of the means of production and distribution, 
are not measures which Prussian autocracy resisted 
as Inimical to their order or likely to strengthen 
German democracy. State Socialism was made in 
many ways a means of buttressing the Prussian ideal 
of the State as an all-powerful omnipresent authority 
disposing alike of the minds and bodies of those 

[140] 



from whom it exacted unqualified allegiance; a very 
powerful means of resisting the political and moral 
democratization of the German people.^ And now 
also in Great Britain State Socialism — a devel- 
opment of " nationalization " which would for in- 
stance vest in the imperial government the title to 
all land in certain of the African colonies to be 
worked as an imperial property — has become one 
of the objects of the most reactionary groups of 
British Imperialists. They have quickly realized 
the natural affinity between military imperialism and 
a certain form of socialism. 

One may still occasionally hear a public orator 
refer to the industrial and social triumphs which 
the workers owe to the war. But those who know 
something of the spirit which has been so rife in 
British and French workshops under governmental 
control during the last two or three years realize 
that great bodies of workers accept such " triumphs " 
with very serious qualifications, despite the increase 
of wages which in some cases, has taken place. The 
very grave unrest which the utmost efforts of the 
governments and the most urgent appeals to the 
patriotism of the workers barely manage to subdue, 
tell more nearly the true story. 

That story might have been different, of course, if 
the habituation to state control, to workshop regi- 
mentation on mihtary lines, to the system of leav- 
ing certificates and factory tribunals and the like, 
had been more gradual, if it had been spread over 

1 See the summary of the discussions of this point in Chapter I 
of this part. 

[141] 



thirty Instead of three years. As It Is, there has 
grown up, side by side with the resentment against 
capitalism as represented by the " profiteer," per- 
haps an equal resentment against the bureaucratic 
state which has replaced the individual employer, or 
rather (In many cases) made a government official 
out of him and given him greater powers than ever. 
The worker still finds himself a "wage slave"; 
he still has to barter his life for sustenance. But 
whereas before he had at least some choice of em- 
ployers, some freedom of movement, could leave 
one job and go to another, could resent the tyranny 
of a foreman by downing tools, he finds — or has 
found in many cases — that under the State he can- 
not leave, that this is an employer who can punish 
Insubordination with death, by sending or returning 
a man to the army, and Is one against whom It Is 
treason to strike. The self-same " master " for 
whom he worked originally has now become a gov- 
ernment official, backed with all the forces of the 
government. And yet he was led to beheve — his 
own Socialist philosophers had told him — that un- 
der such a system the workers would at last be them- 
selves the masters and come into their ownl 

By tens and hundreds of thousands he has ceased 
to believe it. And all the contrivances so far de- 
vised by his Unions or the government to give him 
some measure of control in the workshops have failed 
to remove his feeling that more and more he Is be- 
coming the helpless puppet of forces outside his 
control; that he is practically powerless In the grip 
of a machine too vast, too distant, too all-embracing 

[142] 



for him to check or deflect; that the erstwhile em- 
ployer is close to it, while he himself is remote from 
it. And the growth of powers in the State has 
synchronized with a decline in the moral authority 
of its government. He has seen it attacked vio- 
lently for incompetence, and even deliberate decep- 
tion and corruption, and its personnel changed and 
changed again at the instigation of the very Nation- 
alists and patriots who tell him that it is his duty 
to submit to it and accept its decisions and dictates 
without question. 

There has grown up, naturally, therefore, in the 
minds of very many, a divided sovereignty and a 
divided loyalty. The worker has undoubtedly come 
to feel that the sovereignty of the government should 
be limited by the power of other organizations 
nearer to himself — an attitude analogous to that 
which prompted the Russian workman to create a 
co-ordinate authority in his Soldiers and Workmen's 
Councils and which has given such power to the 
Soviet government as it possesses. From this feel- 
ing has come undoubtedly the growth of Guild So- 
cialism to which so many observers of working class 
opinion in England have recently testified. 

But the question remains why these people, fired 
with the vision of a complete democracy in the fu- 
ture, should be cold or hostile to the war that must 
be won if the world is to be safe for democracy. 
Many — most in England and France — would of 
course deny either coldness or hostility to the aim 
of defeating German militarism and would point out 
that their detestation of militarism and attachment 

,[143] 



to democratic institutions do not date from August, 
19 14, and that what they want is not a relaxing of 
the efforts to win the war, but an increase of the 
efforts to ensure its democratic outcome. They 
point to certain tendencies as proof that the democ- 
racies may find themselves at the end of a long war, 
having destroyed militarism and autocracy in Ger- 
many, but having firmly established both at home; 
that even complete military victory may result in 
exchanging the pre-bellum condition in which those 
things were a menace for one in which they have be- 
come an established fact by virtue of the firm poli- 
tical arrival to power of reactionary elements and 
that elimination of more liberal ones which war so 
often produces. 

Now the monstrous suggestion that the complete 
victory of the Allies will result in the Allied countries 
in a grave setback of liberal and democratic tenden- 
cies, does not come merely, or mainly, from the 
Labourites or Radicals, but from the exceedingly pa- 
triotic and pro-war Conservatives, Imperialists, Pro- 
tectionists, Clericals and reactionaries generally of 
Britain, France and Italy. The reactionary ele- 
ments in those countries openly rejoice that the war 
has temporarily at least put an end to the doctrines 
of democracy and internationalism which they have 
in the past opposed; and the reactionary parties 
have now a power to which they could not aspire 
before the war. No peace time Cabinet of the 
last fifteen years in England could have included a 
Curzon, a Milner, a Carson, a NorthcHffe, a Bal- 
four and a Robert Cecil. 

[144] 



There are of course perfectly arguable explana- 
tions of this phenomenon which do not imply a i 
abandonment of the hope that the restoration c ': 
peace will see the restoration of more democratic 
parties and influences. But for the moment the 
fact is that the democratic influences have declined; 
war has brought to the front parties so anti-demo- 
cratic as to be excluded in times of peace. Can we 
wonder that there are some misgivings among demo- 
crats? Some fear that we may, while intending a 
temporary arrangement, plant growths that will push 
their roots very deep. There is no intention here 
to suggest even that these misgivings are justified. 
But they explain an attitude which must be taken 
into account. 

But a further point remains to be examined. If, 
as we have seen, Socialism is by no means necessarily 
synonymous either with democracy or with freedom, 
we must also ask why it should be synonymous with 
peace, and an internationally organized world. It 
is, at bottom, part of the same question. A world 
of states in a perpetual condition of latent or actual 
conflict, will necessarily be a militarized world, in 
which all efforts within the nations towards freedom 
and democracy will be made subsidiary to military 
needs. The process which brings the reactionary 
to the fore in war time will go on after the war, be- 
cause " war " in the form of a contest in military 
efl'iciency, will be the normal condition of life in the 
world. 

[145] 



^ The ultimate question here then Is, Why should 
a more socialized world be one less given to war? 
What reason have we to suppose that it will handle 
that problem more successfully than the order which 
preceded it? 

Some two years before the war the Independent 
Labour Party published a little book of the present 
writer which opened with these paragraphs: 

*' Do the workers of Europe want to get rid of 
war? Do they think that it matters very much 
whether we get rid of It or not? Is it a thing about 
which they are disposed to take any particular 
trouble ? 

" Personally, I would answer all these questions In 
the negative. I do not believe that at present the 
democracies of the world are particularly Interested 
in the question, that they see any very direct rela- 
tion between the war system and the problems of 
poverty and social progress with which they are 
grappling, or that the thing seems to them worth 
more than a merely passing attention. 

" One can even go a bit farther, and say that there 
Is a very general impression among workers that 
if the world abandoned armaments they might have 
surrendered a weapon which could be used against 
capitalist oppression; or that the building of ships 
is not bad for the wage earners In that It creates 
large expenditure in the form of wages; that the 
armies relieve unemployment, that armament ex- 
penditure is 'good for trade' generally; or that 
after all, war is a pretty fine thing, and that we need 

1 What follows is reprinted from the Manchester Labour Leader. 
[146] 



its discipline. Or, if we don't subscribe to any of 
these things, and are reasonably sure that war is 
an oppression, we are apt to shirk any action by the 
general plea that it is made by the capitalist in the 
interests of capitalism, and will only be got rid of 
when we have got rid of the capitalists; or that the 
only effective way of stopping war is by means of a 
general strike." 

The misgiving there expressed has been tragically 
justified in almost all sections of labour. 

It is not the fact of war having taken place which 
condemns Labour. Labour Parties might have ham- 
mered at the international problem as insistently as, 
for the most part, they neglected it, and still, in spite 
of their best efforts, war might have come. 

The thing which should disturb us, and cause us 
to take stock of our past failures, is that when the 
war did come it found Labour in England — as else- 
where — morally and politically bankrupt, in the 
sense that it had not, and has not yet, any policy 
which differs from that of the capitalist parties with 
which it professes to be utterly and fundamentally 
at variance. In the very gravest crises of our society 
we find Labour men and Socialists the world over 
accepting en bloc the policies of the very order whose 
political conceptions and scheme of life they had 
heretofore resisted as pernicious and antl-soclal, and 
had been engaged in attempting to destroy. 

Not only had organized Socialism in the crisis no 
real alternative to offer, but all over the world it 
has, In large part, sanctioned the political morals 
of the capitalist majorities, displayed the same order 

[147] 



of political emotions, been moved apparently by the 
same instincts. Can a creed which stands the fiery 
test so poorly as this insipre very much hope? 

I have put the criticism in that severe form for 
this reason: Some of us who were not Socialists be- 
fore the war, and who are most conscious of the 
failure of Socialism in the sense just indicated, are 
nevertheless turning to some form of Socialism as 
the best hope of saving the world from that madness 
which threatens to send whole nations down the 
steep places to destruction. 

How comes It that with a deep sense of the failure 
just Indicated strong upon them, so many internation- 
alists are, nevertheless, thus looking more than in 
the past to the Soclahst solution? 

It Is rather important to make clear that very 
often, at least, their reasons are not those most fre- 
quently cited as identifying Socialism and pacifism. 
The little book from which quotation has just been 
made, Is devoted, in no small part, to combating the 
proposition that war is a " capitalist plot," engi- 
neered over the heads of the people by little groups 
of Interested Individuals for purely Individual ends. 
Not only is It true that but for the ready acquiescence 
of the peoples, as a whole, the Intrigues of little 
groups of capitalists would necessarily remain sterile, 
but the whole notion of the special responsibility of 
capitalist cliques Implies a helplessness on the part 
of the mass which would Indeed make one despair 
of humanity. It Is not possible to enter Into that 
particular controversy here, but I see no reason to 
alter, in the slightest degree, past criticism of the 

[148] 



conception of war as " capitalist plot." I would, 
indeed, go further. If the Socialism of the future 
is merely to mean a transfer of ownership In land 
and capital from the Individual to the State pre- 
serving the type of mind and feeling which we now 
know in western society, the Soclahst organization of 
nations Is likely to give us a condition even more 
susceptible to bitter mlhtary conflicts than is the 
capitalist and individualist economy. 

The matter is worth a little examination. In- 
dividualist capitalism and trade is " naturally " in- 
ternationalist, rather than natlonahst. Much of the 
internationalism of Socialist parties in the past has 
been fortuitous. The British capitalist, after all, 
did exploit the Transvaal mines long before the Boer 
War, and the ownership of those mines was not 
changed by the war itself. If the capitalists who 
finally quarrelled over Morocco had been left to 
themselves they would have managed to divide the 
spoils quite amicably, as the history of the downfall 
of M. Calllaux before the war clearly proves. What 
made it Impossible for M. Calllaux to settle the 
Franco-German conflicts In Africa was not the cap- 
italists, but the peoples, the democracies, or their 
Chauvinistic elements; not individualist and capital- 
ist conceptions of trade and industry, but National- 
ist conceptions. 

The first fruits of the nationalization of wealth is 
to diminish, not to increase, that economic Inter- 
dependence of nations which, of itself, would con- 
stitute, in some measure, a mechanical check to war. 
And if our Socialism after the war is to be of the 

[149} 



type which the war has produced so far, we shall be 
confronted in the immediate future with a deliberate 
attempt to break down the international basis of in- 
dustry, and to replace it by a nationalist one, giving 
rise to a competition in self-sufficingness and a 
scramble for the separate national control of the raw 
materials of the world in undeveloped territories, out 
of which would inevitably come more wars. 

Under the individualist system of ownership of 
land there was no change in ownership by conquest. 
A victorious State which captured territory captured 
in fact nothing, because it also captured the owners 
of the territory and confirmed them in their owner- 
ship, as when Germany conquered Asace-Lorraine. 
But if we could imagine the ownership of the mines 
and land of Alsace vested in the French State, Ger- 
many would, in fact, have effected a change in actual 
ownership, as well as a change in political adminis- 
tration. State ownership of itself, far from dimin- 
ishing the direct economic motive to warfare, will 
increase it. 

It is quite possible to imagine Equatorial Africa 
divided among two or three European Socialist 
States, the ownership of the land vested in those 
States, the territories being worked like human cattle 
ranches, and the " owners " quarrelling desperately 
over their respective *' estates," and all of them 
" working " those estates to the last limit of nigger 
endurance. We might get a Europe of Socialist- 
government slave-owners. 

The reader will note that it is not here denied 
in the least that, under the present individualist and 

[150] 



capitalistic system, certain groups in a State like 
Germany may have an interest in retaining, for in- 
stance, the coal and iron mines of Alsace-Lorraine 
(although the economic interest of the German peo- 
ple, as a whole therein, is very questionable). The 
point I am making is that under State Socialism, the 
case for the economic interest of the people as a 
whole in conquest would be far more plausible than 
under the old system. The case may be summarized 
thus: 

The pacifism of Socialism is not the outcome of 
the methods and mechanism of Socialist economics, 
htit arises from the state of mind which the Social- 
ist organization of society engenders. War in capi- 
talist society does not arise from the mechanism of 
capitalism, but from the state of mind which a capital- 
ist society engenders, quite as much among the 
workers as among the capitalists, and which may 
lead both to support policies obviously to their ma- 
terial disadvantage. 

One of the most fundamental differences between 
the socialistic outlook of the twentieth century and 
the individualist laissez-faire attitude, of the nine- 
teenth, is the social fatalism which marked the latter, 
and is so largely absent from the former. The 
older assumptions implied that, as societies grew by 
virtue of immutable laws and were not made, man's 
collective effort could have little effect thereon. The 
attitude of the Socialist (despite the economic deter- 
minism of the Marxian school) comes nearer to the 
assumption that societies are made by men, who can 
consequently alter them. It is this assumption which 

[151] 



comes nearest to explaining the natural affinity be- 
tween socialism and internationalism, and pacifism, 
not otherwise always explainable. The underlying 
fatalism of the older doctrine was perhaps the great- 
est single obstacle before the war to any common 
effort towards a new international order that might 
help to obviate war. War was regarded as some- 
thing which descended upon man like the earthquake 
and the rain, the result of forces which he could not 
control. It was fate, or part of our nature, and to 
hope that we could change it was to " create an un- 
real world of our imagination which ignores the deep- 
est forces of human nature." Anyone at all fa- 
miliar with the literature of war and peace will 
recognize immediately this attitude. " As long as 
human nature remains what it is," " As long as men 
are men " — " Practical men accept the world as 
they find it" — what internationalist does not know 
the weary formulas by which the average man 
seemed positively to rejoice in his helplessness, re- 
joiced in proclaiming himself the puppet of some 
vague outside forces which he could not direct? The 
sophisticated attempted to give a scientific explana- 
tion of this alleged inevitability of war; the religi- 
ously minded drifted into a military mysticism con- 
cerning It; but there was no military writer of any 
eminence who did not sound loudly this fatalistic 
note. 

Against that blank wall of fatalism, some of the 
most needed reforms, especially in the international 
field, smote in vain. The great mass In Europe were 
ineradicably convinced that efforts towards the pre- 

[152] 



vention of war were futile. This feeling of the 
helplessness was ingrained, going down to profound 
depths. The individual citizen, however uneasy 
about the international situation, felt himself within 
the grip of forces he did not know how to manage. 
And so, at the last, we had this monstrous paradox: 
in July, 1 9 14, a whole world (including the great 
mass of the German and Austrian peoples) wanting 
peace, and a whole world going to war. Every- 
body keenly desiring one thing, everybody doing ex- 
actly the opposite. Butler's phantasy had become 
a fact and the machine which mankind had created 
with his own hands turned round and destroyed 
him. 

Now that could never have happened if men as 
a whole had been inspired for a generation previ- 
ously by a different spirit. If they had been accus- 
tomed to the view that society was mainly what they 
cared to make it, that it depended upon their will, 
that they could, in fact, " manage themselves," the 
monstrous paradox just described would have been 
impossible. 

Happily, Socialism, of whatever form, has got 
away from the notion that you must leave things in 
society to happy — or unhappy — chance ; to im- 
mutable " laws " we cannot modify; that States are 
not " made." And that is the very first step to a 
" co-operative peace." 

But there is a second, just as important. AUied 
to this habit, which belonged so much to the old in- 
dividualist society, of " taking things as we find 
them," of regarding the organization of society as 

[153] 



something that we cannot much alter, went also the 
habit of refusing to question the purpose for which 
our State had come into being. English or Ger- 
man, we all had to defend our Fatherland: " For 
King and Country." Any kind of king and any 
kind of country. That was part of an almost re- 
ligious injunction. The notion that we should ques- 
tion the kind of country that it should be, immediately 
(and very suggestively) " smelt of Socialism." 

The Tory was ready to die for his country — has 
died for it in his thousands — without ever asking 
for a moment what it stood for. " My country, 
right or wrong." It Is a real religious fanaticism, 
the " religion of nationalism." Its devotee asks no 
questions. He Is of his herd, and he fights with It. 

It is in a special sense true of the German; but 
it is also true, in some degree, of his enemy. Each 
at the outbreak of the war was for his State, what- 
ever that State stood for, without question. And 
that of course, would have made war inevitable, even 
if the differences between them had been of the 
smallest. 

The socialistic attitude helps to correct the funda- 
mental assumption that the ultimate problem in poli- 
tics is concerned with the struggle of rival states for 
domination and survival. It tends to make men 
feel, on the contrary, that the ultimate problem of 
politics is the quality of life led by the men that 
make up the states. 

The wiseacres in Germany and elsewhere, who 
manage to make life in the world what it has been for 
its youth during the last four years, and what it is 

[154] 



likely to be during the next generation or two, have 
achieved that appalling result by talking in terms of 
" National Destiny," " Fatherland," and the rest 
of it, instead of in terms of the daily lives of men and 
women. If you were to ask one of these political 
bandits (not alone in Prussia), how his triumphs 
of statecraft, the carrying of his flag over the world, 
would affect the daily life of his own people under 
it, he would deem you guilty of a gross irrelevance. 
High politics are not concerned with such triviaUties. 
If we could become deeply interested in the quality of 
the common life in our states — if that were our 
main interest — we should see that thereon these 
changes of frontiers and political sovereignties about 
which most wars are fought, have no bearing. The 
Statesmen will never solve the political problems of 
Europe by settling the questions involved, because 
for the most part, they cannot be settled. Five dif- 
ferent nationalities are today laying equally just 
claims to the same piece of Balkan territory. Do- 
ing " justice " to one, means doing injustice to four 
— however you may settle it. But if the main in- 
terest of these people were centred on the quality 
of their lives — on work, health, love, children, 
art, music, play, — no problems would have arisen. 
But we have built a political tradition, as we built 
in the past, a religious tradition, around irreconcil- 
able differences that do not matter. The story of 
the religious struggles gives us a hint of the fashion 
in which sociahsm may be working towards a solu- 
tion. 

Europe fought for some two hundred years over 
[155] 



questions arising out of the problem of the Real 
Presence. The religious wars did not stop because 
that question was settled (they could not settle 
it) but because men became interested in other 
things, which, strange as it may seem, enabled them 
to see that battles cannot determine a theological 
question. And the story of socialism would seem to 
show that advance in the political field will be made, 
not by frontal attack upon old political and national- 
ist dogmas, and prejudices, but by getting folk con- 
cerned about things more real than rival national- 
isms: about a socialism that is not merely a matter 
of recasting the mechanism of production and ex- 
change.^ 

1 The idea seems to be disturbing Mr. Wells. The following 
from " Joan and Peter," although certainly very inadequate as a 
statement of the problem of Irish nationalism, does bring into relief 
the point just dealt with: 

"All this rot about Ireland a Nation and about the Harp, which 
isn't properly their symbol, and the dear old Green Flag, which 
isn't properly their colour! . . . They can't believe in that stuff 
nowadays. . . . But can they? In our big world? And about be- 
ing a Black Protestant and pretending Catholics are poison, or the 
other way round. What are Protestants and Catholics now? . . . 
Old, dead squabbles. . . . Dead as Druids. . . . Keeping up all 
that bickering stuff, when a child of eight ought to know nowadays 
that the Christian God started out to be a universal, charitable 
God. ... If Christ came to Dublin the Catholics and Protestants 
would have a free fight to settle which was to crucify him. . . ." 

" It's the way with them," said Oswald. " We've got to respect 
Irish opinion." 

" It doesn't respect itself. Everywhere else in the world, wher- 
ever we have been, there's been at least something like the germ of 
an idea of a new life. But here! When you get over here you 
realize for the first time that England is after all a living country 
trying to get on to something — compared with this merry-go-round. 
. . . It's exactly like a merry-go-round churning away. It's the 
atmosphere of a country fair. An Irishman hasn't any idea of a 
future at all, so far as I can see — except that perhaps his grand- 
children will tell stories of what a fine fellow he was. . . ." 

Oswald was not sure of the extent of Peter's audience. " The 
susceptibilities of a proud people, Peter," he whispered, with his 
eye on the back of their host. 

[156] 



" Bother their susceptibilities. Much they care for our suscepti- 
bilities. The worst insult you can offer a grownup man is to 
humour him," said Peter. " What's the good of pretending to be 
sympathetic with all this Wearing of the Green? It's like our 
White Rose League. Let 'em do it by all means if they want to, 
but don't let's pretend we think it romantic and beautiful and all 
the rest of it. It's just posing and dressing up, and it's a nuisance, 
Nobby. All Dublin is posing and dressing up and playing at re- 
bellion, and so is all Ulster. The Volunteers of the eighteenth 
century all over again. It's like historical charades. And they've 
pointed loaded guns at each other. Only idiots point loaded guns. 
Why can't we get out of it and leave them to pose and dress up 
and then tell anecdotes and anecdotes and anecdotes about it until 
they are sick of it? If ever they are sick of it. Let them have 
their Civil War if they want it; let them keep on with Civil Wars 
for ever; what has it got to do with us?" 

He went on talking after a moment's reflection. 

" It's as if we were hypnotized and couldn't get away from mean 
things, beastly suspicions and stale quarrels. I suppose we are still 
half apes. I suppose our brains set too easily and rapidly. I sup- 
pose it's easy to quarrel yet and still hard to understand. We take 
to jealousy and bitterness as ducklings take to water." 

"Is there no way out, Peter?" 

"If some great idea would take hold of the world!" said 
Peter. ... 

" There have been some great ideas," said Oswald. 

" If it would take hold of one's life." Peter finished his 
thought. . . . 

" There has been Christianity," said Oswald. 

" Christianity! " Peter pointed at the distant mist that was Dub- 
lin. " Sour Protestants," he said, " and dirty priests setting simple 
people by the ears." 

" But that isn't true Christianity." • 

"There isn't true Christianity," said Peter compactly. . . . 

" W^ell, there's love of country, then," said Oswald. 

"That Dublin corporation is the most patriotic and nationalist in 
the world. Fierce about it. And it's got complete control there. 
It's green in grain. No English need apply. . . . From the point 
of view of administration that town is a muck heap — for patriotic 
Growings. Look at their dirty ill-paved streets. Look at their filthy 
slums! See how they let their blessed nation's children fester and 
die!" 

" There are bigger ideas than patriotism. There are ideas of 
empire, the Pax Britannica." 

" Lansdowne and Carson smuggling guns." 

"Well, is there nothing? Do you know of nothing?" Oswald 
turned on his ward for the reply. 

" There's a sort of idea, I suppose." 

" But what idea ? " 

" There's an idea in our minds." 

" But what is it, Peter ? " 

[157] 



" Call it Civilization," Peter tried. 

"I believe," he went on, weighing his words carefully, "as you 
believe really, in the Republic of Mankind, in universal work for a 
common end — for freedom, welfare and beauty. Haven't you 
taught me that? " 

"Have I taught you that?" 

"What else can there be?" 

" I suppose I have been coming to that myself," said Oswald. 

" I think you've always been there. That seems to me to be the 
commonsense aim for all humanity. You're awake to it. You've 
awakened me to it and I believe in it. But most of this world is 
still deep in its old Fixed Ideas, walking in its sleep, the Fixed 
Ideas of class and nationality, of partizan religion, race supersti- 
tion, and all the rest of 'em. These things hold the mind of the 
world. And it won't wake up. It won't wake up. . . . What can 
we do? We've got to a sort of idea, it's true. But here are these 
Irish, for example, naturally wittier and quicker than you or I, 
hypnotized by Orange and Green, by Protestant and Catholic, by 
all these stale things — drifting towards murder. It's murder is 
coming here. You can smell the bloodshed coming on the air — 
and people like we are can't do a thing to prevent it. Not a thing. 
The silliest bloodshed it will be. The silliest bloodshed the world 
has ever seen. We can't do a thing to wake them up. . . ." 

He danced a couple of steps with vexation. 

" I don't knoiv. Nobby," he cried. " I don't know. I can't find 
the way. I'm making a mess of my life. I'm not getting on with 
my work. You knoiv I'm not. . . . Either we're mad or this world 
is. Here's all these people in Ireland letting a solemn humbug of a 
lawyer with a heavy chin and a lumpish mind muddle them into a 
civil war — and that's reality! That's life! The Solemn League 
and Covenant — copied out of old history books! That's being 
serious! And over there in England, across the sea, muddle and 
muck and nonsense indescribable. Oh and we're in it! ... Oh! 
I want to get out of all this. I don't like this world of ours. I 
want to get into a world awake. I'm young and I'm greedy. I've 
only got one life to live, Nobby. ... I want to spend it where 
something is being made. Made for good and all. Where clever 
men can do something more than sit overlong at meals and tell 
spiteful, funny stories. Where there's something better to do than 
play about with one's brains and viscera! . . ." 



[158] 



CHAPTER V 

MILITARY CONSCRIPTION AND THE INSTITUTION OF 
PRIVATE PROPERTY 

The fashion in wliich the needs of war have prompted a 
reassertion of the absolute rights of the state over the person 
— his life and mind — is modifying age-long conceptions of 
private propert)^ Confiscation, conscription of wealth and 
the Eighth Commandment. Not repudiation, but a progres- 
sive income tax. The virtual bankruptcy of some of the 
belligerent states and its effect on future legislation. Neces- 
sitas . . . 

" In the disposal of the surplus above the 
standard of life, society has gone as far wrong 
as in its neglect to secure the necessary basis of 
any genuine industrial efficiency or decent so- 
cial order. ... It is from this constantly aris- 
ing surplus . . . that will have to be found 
the new capital which the community day by day 
needs for the perpetual improvement and in- 
crease of its various enterprises, for which we 
shall decline to be dependent on the usury-ex- 
acting financiers." 

" For raising the greater part of the revenue 
required, the Party demands the direct taxa- 
tion of incomes above the necessary cost of 
family maintenance; and, for the requisite ef- 
fort to pay off the national debt, the direct taxa- 
tion of private fortunes both during life and 
at death. . . . The income tax on large In- 
[159] 



comes to rise to sixteen and even nineteen shill- 
ings in the pound, [that is to say from eighty 
to ninety-five cents on the dollar]. . . . The 
Labour Party stands for a special capital levy 
to pay off, if not the whole, a very substantial 
part of the entire national debt." 
— From the British Labour Party Programme. 

" The Watchwords shall be * Conscription of 
Wealth and Equality of Income ' to be realized by: 

" (a) Expropriation of private landowners 
and capitalists. No compensation beyond an 
ample provision against Individual hardship, 
(b) All men and women willing to work to be 
paid, even when their work happens to be not 
needed, just as soldiers are paid when they are 
not fighting. Equal payment for all to be the 
result at which reorganization shall aim. (c) 
Instead of the present capitalistic methods of 
production, ownership by the state: man- 
agement BY the workers. This shall be 
applied Immediately to the case of Mines, Rail- 
ways, Shipping, Shipbuilding, and Engineering, 
Electric Light and Power, Gas and Water . . . 

" Those classes who have sanctioned and ap- 
proved the conscription of men, cannot on any 
moral ground object to the conscription of 
money — expropriation of property owners for 
national purposes. Indeed the latter has jus- 
tifications which cannot be Invoked for the 
former." 
— From the Lanshury-H erald Programme. 

ri6o] 



Conscription of Wealth — the right of the State 
to demand from Its citizens the contributions neces- 
sary for the maintenance of its pubhc service — Is 
a principle as old as organized society. Taxation Is 
conscription of wealth. But we should go woefully 
astray if we assumed from this that the introduction 
of military conscription as it Is now known In Eng- 
land has had no effect in changing old Ideas as to 
the rights of the community over the property of the 
individual. Military conscription has created a 
revolution in those ideas, a moral revolution In which 
the whole Institution of private property is Involved. 

Conscription of wealth In the form of taxation 
for public purposes has always heretofore operated 
within very definite limits, and deliberate seizure of 
property for the purpose of creating equality in the 
distribution of wealth, would, until the war, have 
been regarded as well outside those limits, and as 
morally perfidious. This Is one of those cases in 
which the essence of the distinction between very 
different things is a difference of degree. 

The sudden introduction of conscription Into 
Britain has had certain moral and psychological ef- 
fects which the institution may not have had In con- 
tinental countries, for the simple reason that In them 
its introduction has been for the most part a process 
extending over generations. Gradual habituation 
will lead us to accept almost any situation without 
much vivid questioning. In England, conscription 
came upon the people without historical preparation, 
and not, incidentally, by selective draft with gen- 
erous exemptions. It was an Institution they had 

[i6i] 



always looked upon as alien, and one which they 
boasted " Englishmen would never stand." Under 
it, a whole generation of young Englishmen were 
suddenly confronted with the fact that their lives 
did not belong to themselves ; that each owed his life 
to the state. But if he owed life itself to the com- 
munity, what did the state owe to him? And if he 
must give, or at least risk, everything that he pos- 
sessed, to life itself, were others giving or risking 
what they possessed? Here was new light on the 
Institution of private property. If the life of each 
belongs to the community, then assuredly does his 
property. 

For the great masses of the British working 
classes, conscription has solved the ethical problem 
involved in the confiscation of capital. The eighth 
commandment no longer stands in the way as it stood 
so long in the case of a people still religiously minded, 
and still feeling the weight of Puritan tradition. 

For generations in modern states — certainly 
since the industrial revolution — there has been fair 
presumption that the aggregate wealth production 
would sujffice for the abohtion of poverty. If approxi- 
mate equality in distribution could be achieved. But 
the various schemes looking to that end have for 
generations been paralysed by scruples largely con- 
cerned with the Institution of Private Property. 
Most plans of redistribution of wealth have come 
to naught because of the fact that purchase and com- 
pensation involves taking from the individual a dol- 
lar and giving him a hundred cents. In purchasing 
watered railroad stock, or concerns like the Standard 

[162] 



Oil Company, one would be creating a new class of 
claimants upon the wealth of the community while 
destroying an old. It was a real difficulty, though 
a smaller one than it seemed to earlier critics of so- 
cialism. 

The assumed ethical impossibility of confiscation 
was one of the great moral buttresses of the older or- 
der. The present writer remembers hearing an old 
Victorian Liberal make a statement of the moral case 
against Socialism in some such terms as these: 

" Though he happens to be rich, and I hap- 
pen to be poor ; though he does not want it and I 
do; though I am hungry and he is gorged; 
though my children starve while he overfeeds 
his dogs — all has nothing to do with it. The 
money is not mine. If I take it I rob. Tup- 
pence pilfered from a millionaire is as much 
theft as when snatched from the old apple- 
woman. Once admit that because ' I want it ' 
I may take it, and society will become a den 
of thieves, not less so because the thieves use 
long words about their theft. If we cover up 
the moral fact with them, the end has begun. 
Expropriation, Confiscation, the Social Sanction 
of the Majority, may be such words. But the 
simple imperative is unshaken; it remains ab- 
solute : ' Thou shalt not steal.' " 
That had a very strong and deep appeal to the 
Victorian non-conformists (many of them workmen) 
to whom it was addressed. It would have very little 
appeal if addressed today to an audience of English 
working men conscripts. The retort is too obvious. 

[163] 



If it is theft to take a man's money for the purposes 
of the State, is it any less theft to take his Hfe? 
Military conscription implies that we may for the 
general good take and even destroy the person of the 
citizen. Why not then his property? Is that more 
sacred? The individual must be ready to give his 
life for the general good — we have the right to 
compel him to do so. But we have not the same 
right over his possessions! Indeed the philosophy 
which attempts to justify military conscription gives 
to the community greater powers over the individual 
than even the powers of life and death. It asserts 
the right of the State to compel the citizen not only 
to give his own life, but to take the lives of others, 
whatever his personal conviction as to the cause 
which those others represent. Thus the political 
doctrine by which alone Conscription can be justified 
demands of the individual citizen for the purposes 
of the community the surrender of all his freedoms, 
convictions, person, life, conscience — but not 
money. 

Just compare the powers which the government 
is now exercising for a military purpose and those 
which it would exercise in assuring a better distribu- 
tion of wealth for social purposes. (And it should 
be remembered that the powers now exercised are 
inforced by modern states not only on behalf of 
foreign policies which are purely defensive, but on 
behalf of policies like those which led Italy to war 
for the conquest of Tripoli, Russia to war with 
Japan, or like those which led England to war for 
the conquest of the Boer Republics.) Military Con- 

[164] 



scrlption empowers the State to say to Its citizens : 

" The government having decided to go to 
war, you are to leave your wife and your chil- 
dren and their future to our care. You shall, 
if necessary, give us your life without question. 
More, we demand that you shall kill as many of 
the enemy citizens as possible; if you refuse we 
shall use compulsion to the extent of imprison- 
ment, torture or death." 
The government of every great state in the world 
now possesses and exercises to the full those powers. 
What would be the powers which a Socialist gov- 
ernment, commissioned to ensure a better distribu- 
tion of the national wealth, would require for its 
purpose? Just compare its demand upon the indi- 
vidual citizen with that made now by Conscription. 
It would in effect say to that small minority which 
possesses the wealth: 

" The government having been authorized to 
take measures to liberate the country from evil 
economic conditions, asks as your contribution to 
that purpose, not any positive act, (as it would 
ask you to kill foreigners under your military 
obligation) ; nor does it ask you to give your 
life, or freedom, or conviction; nor does it ask 
you to accept poverty, because its object Is to 
exempt all from poverty; it asks you merely to 
acquiesce in its withdrawal of its protection of 
your surplus and unneeded wealth, the reten- 
tion of which involves the slavery of so many 
of your countrymen," 
This parallel is, as we know, being very commonly 
[165] 



drawn. Does any one believe it can leave the insti- 
tution of private property unaffected? 

The London Herald at the time of the publication 
of the Programme from which an extract is given 
at the head of this chapter, commented on the pro- 
posal for the conscription of the public utilities in 
these terms: 

" There is at least one class who are estopped 
from objecting to it on moral grounds. That 
class are the people who have defended mili- 
tary conscription. And they happen to be those 
in possession of the wealth it is proposed to 
conscribe — or the machinery of profiteering. 
Indeed the phrase Conscription of Wealth, al- 
though perhaps the three words that are des- 
tined to play the largest part in the creation of 
the New Age, is not an accurate description of 
what would take place under better distribu- 
tion. The government would not ' seize ' 
wealth at all. It would prevent its being 
seized by the profiteers; would cease to spend 
its energies in protecting profiteers, in enforc- 
ing the Laws which alone make capitalist 
profits possible. 

" Moreover, there is this point which should 
be made clear : To say that military conscrip- 
tion has disposed of the moral objection to Con- 
fiscation without compensation, does not mean 
that military conscription merely enables the 
advocates of confiscation to silence critics by a 
dialectical point, a tu quoque shutting up a pro- 
test against one wrong by citing the existence 
I166] 



of a greater one; still less that the Conscription 
of Wealth based on the right of each to a fair 
share of the wealth he does his part in creating, 
is in any way a moral justification of military 
conscription. For while there can be no moral 
defence of military conscription which does not 
also justify the confiscation of private property 
for public ends — or the refusal to accord pro- 
tection to certain forms of private gain — this 
latter in no way justifies the military institution. 
Morally the state's right to take the lives of its 
citizens must include the right to retake the 
money they have ' absorbed ' from the com- 
munity. But the right to restore wealth by no 
sort of sophistry can be made to include the 
right to take life. As things stand we have al- 
lowed the militarists so to distort a social prin- 
ciple as to leave out what is good and might 
make for the general welfare, but to apply what 
is bad and tells most heavily against the 
workers." 

It is not to be assumed from the foregoing that 
wild schemes of confiscation will ever be attempted. 
But the change of moral attitude towards enterprises 
of private profit and their relation to the community 
will involve a profound change in the terms upon 
which the state purchase of public utilities will be 
made. Some form of purchase is likely to prove 
both easier and, in the end, less wasteful perhaps, 
than expropriation. It is a matter of bargain. The 
newly awakened sense on the part of the dispossessed 

[167] 



of the moral right of expropriation, and the newly 
awakened sense on the part of the possessors, that 
such a right might very well be exercised, are an 
assurance that the conditions of purchase will be 
economically possible and advantageous for the com- 
munity. The chastening effect of this newer atti- 
tude is seen in the latest proposals for dealing with 
a very precious and very powerful British interest 

— beer. The reports of the English, Scottish and 
Irish committees ^ on the conditions under which the 
government might purchase all the private interests 
in the Liquor Trade are a startling advance on any 
previous recommendations. They are of especial 
interest of course, as indicating principles likely to 
be invoked in other cases of state purchase. The 
main principles laid down by the English Liquor 
Purchase Committee under Lord Sumner — a Com- 
mittee which included the Permanent Secretary of 
the Treasury and two eminent Public Accountants 

— are of general application. It is proposed (i) 
to take as the basis the average net profits of the 
four years preceding the war; (ii) to fix what we 
may call the pre-war price at a certain number of 
years' purchase (in this case normally 15) ; (iii) to 
scale down the cash price so arrived at in proportion 
to the ascertained fall in general capital values be- 
tween August, 1 9 14, and the date of settlement; 
(iv) to give in full discharge Government securities 
that would then and there sell for such a sum ; and 
(v) to leave this purchase price for each concern 
to be judicially allocated among all interests, deben- 

* See British government document Cd. 9042. 
[168] 



ture-holders, preference and ordinary shareholders, 
and what not, according to the relative security and 
market value of their several holdings. These pro- 
posals, which avoid both war depreciation and war 
inflation of profits, are of great importance. Any 
joint-stock company — or, rather, the debentures 
(bonds) and shares (stocks) which together make 
up the entire interest of a joint-stock company — 
may be equitably transferred from private to public 
ownership on similar principles of compensation ac- 
cording to pre-war profits and so many years' pur- 
chase, reduced to the scale of present capital values, 
whether the business be transport, the extraction of 
coal, the brewing of beer or the issue of life assur- 
ance policies. As one commentator points out,^ 

The Menu Statesman. It is noteworthy that the Committee sum- 
marily disposes of the claims often put forward (a) that the de- 
benture-holders, at any rate, should be given an undiminished 
income for ever in the much more valuable Government securities; 
(b) that the expropriated stockholders should be given an " un- 
depreciated " capital value, and thus be exempted from the common 
lot of investors who find that the number of years' purchase that 
they can get for their dividends has (owing merely to the rise 
in the current rate of interest) fallen by 25 per cent; (c) that the 
owners of the great stocks of spirits, now worth some ninety million 
pounds more than they cost in 1914, should be allowed to retain 
this huge " unearned increment," in addition to being compensated 
for their trading profits. The Scottish Committee would bring 
them under the principle of the Excess Profits Duty, and take 80 
per cent, for the Exchequer. But when all equitable allowances 
and deductions are made, the property to be transferred to the 
State — the amount of the substitution of Government securities for 
debentures and share certificates — is estimated, for the United 
Kingdom, at between 400 and 500 million pounds, subject to the 
scaling-down in proportion to general depreciation of capital values 
— at present about 25 per cent. — and offset by numerous credit 
items (such as the fifty million pounds Excess Profits Duty on the 
whisky stocks). One member only, among all three Committees, 
thought the compensation too small (Mr. Thomas O'Donnell). On 
the other hand, Mr. Adamson, M.P., now the chairman of the Par- 
liamentary Labour Party, records his dissent on the ground that 
it is excessive. 

[169] 



such transaction or all the transactions put together, 
whilst they would keep the accountants busy, and 
necessitate some reprinting of security documents, 
would not mean any increase (other than merely 
nominal) in the National Debt, and no increase in 
the interest charge ; would not necessarily involve any 
cash payments ; nor cause disturbance of the market 
for securities. 

Along some such lines as the foregoing, we may 
expect great plans of nationalization in the near fu- 
ture. Mr. Sidney Webb's organ has already an- 
nounced that we may soon expect the government 
to make public its decision to nationalize the rail- 
ways and canals. It is already clear that the sixteen 
great " super-power stations," which are to generate 
electric light, heat and power for the whole king- 
dom, must be erected and owned by the State itself, 
with the whole existing municipal and joint-stock 
electric plant unified, under local management, in a 
common distributive system. With the railways and 
the supply of electricity in public hands, it will hardly 
be possible to retransfer the coal mines to the colliery 
companies, which are themselves rapidly fusing and 
combining. What is to happen to joint-stock life 
assurance and banking may not yet seem so plain, 
but opinion is apparently ripening towards drastic 
change. 

We may take it as fairly certain that every effort 
will be made to avoid direct confiscation of property 
as a source of public funds, and to look instead to 
the absorption of personal income. A millionaire's 
railroad stock will not be taken from him, but his 

[170] 



income may be taxed ninety per cent. More and 
more will unearned increment be absorbed by the 
community. With the railroads, public communica- 
tions, and great public utilities all in public hands, 
able, by the manipulation of rates to control very 
largely the direction of development in industry; 
with a progressive income tax, twenty years or so 
would probably see the " painless " absorption by 
the community of a vast body of profits, (" economic 
rent "), now falling into private hands. 

Equality of income as an ideal of the future de- 
mocracy bears a relation to the financial condition 
of the European belligerent states, as they will exist 
after the war, which Is not perhaps generally appre- 
ciated. The aim of equality will have behind it the 
push of forces that are more than moral. For, the 
heavier the indebtedness of the European States, the 
more will they be compelled to resort to ruthless 
taxation of surplus wealth as the only alternative to 
repudiation; and obviously that process has only to 
go on long enough to end in equalization of income. 
With that result achieved the problem of public debt 
and national bankruptcy (at least In so far as in- 
debtedness to the states' own citizens is concerned) 
would be solved. For public loans are a device for 
perpetuating Inequality of income. If we could 
imagine a public loan to which each citizen had made 
an equal contribution, it would not matter whether 
the loan were paid or not. The State would tax 
each citizen the same amount in order that the same 
citizen might receive it back as interest on his loan. 
It would be simpler to let him do the mental book- 

[171] 



keeping in his own mind and dispense with tax- 
gatherer and treasury official. 

This truth has more than mere fanciful interest. 

Most of the continental belligerents of Europe 
have already reached a condition of thinly disguised 
bankruptcy. Austria-Hungary for instance, has al- 
ready eaten up four-fifths of its entire capital value 
in war debt; while none of the other countries falls 
short of one-half. Germany, with about two-thirds 
of the population of the United States will (assum- 
ing that the costs go on a few months longer) be 
compelled, for the payment of the interest on her 
national debt alone, ^ to find annually a sum of two 
biUion dollars. 

But a short time ago the United States, with a 
population larger than that of Germany, found a 
billion dollar budget for all purposes of the national 
government, an intolerable extravagance. Today 
the German government has to find twice that sum 
for debt charges alone, before a mark can be spent 
upon the actual business of government. France 
with barely one-third of the population of the United 
States will be compelled to find nearly one billion 
dollars annually for debt charges alone, before any- 
thing can be spent upon pensions, reconstruction or 
the work of government. As Mr. Brougham Vil- 
liers has pointed out,^ " every conceivable means 
of raising money, except that of putting a heavy di- 

1 About one-eighth of this is the debt of the various states of the 
empire. 

2 See "Britain After the Peace" (T. Fisher Unwin: London) 
and a remarkable series of articles in War and Peace (London) 
for June and July, 1918. 

[172] 



rect tax on the rich," has already been tried on the 
Continent. Except in so far as they impose special 
war profit taxes, which will cease to yield any money 
at the end of the war, these schemes are simply 
desperate attempts to glean something from a field 
that has already been swept bare by the needy 
Treasuries of Europe. " We may be confident " he 
says, " that if there really had been any important 
source of revenue that could have been taxed with- 
out offending the big landlords and capitalists of 
Europe it would have been tapped long before this." 

We may take it as absolutely certain that in the 
first year of peace Europe must find at least $5,500,- 
000,000 by new taxation or new loans, if the interest 
on its war debts is to be paid. Within six months 
of the conclusion of peace, interest to the tune of 
$2,500,000,000 must either be paid or the claims 
dishonoured; and that in addition to all the regular 
expenses of the States, to the necessary provision 
for discharged soldiers, and to any money that may 
be wanted to restore industry and maintain credit. 

Some nations will be in a worse case than others, 
but the burden of national indebtedness will every- 
where but in America present statesmen with a crop 
of problems which they cannot solve except by revo- 
lutionary devices. Other issues may be evaded or 
postponed by astute political managers. But the 
necessity of finding the huge sums of money to pay 
the interest on the War Loans in a time of the gravest 
economic disorder and uncertainty cannot be dodged. 

Mr. Brougham Villiers thinks that there are only 
three ways in which the Governments of Europe can 

[173] 



meet this situation: by admitting bankruptcy, and, 
either for a term of years or for good, suspending 
payment of interest; by raising new loans, or by mak- 
ing a wholesale raid for revenue on land, capital, war 
profits, in fact, on any and every accumulation of 
wealth that has hitherto almost entirely escaped 
direct taxation. " They cannot deliberate very long 
upon which course they will take, for interest falls 
due on its day and must be paid on its day, while 
within six months another $2,500,000,000 will have 
become due and must be dealt with. Nor will it be 
possible any longer to conceal from the public the 
desperate condition of European finance. There 
will be no ravenous war expenditure going on, giving 
excuse for loans out of the proceeds of which any 
demand not provided for by the regular taxes can 
be met. They must decide at once, and whatever 
course they adopt, it seems to me, implies a funda- 
mental revolution in the European system." ^ 

FINANCES OF CONTINENTAL BELLIGERENTS. 

IN MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. 

National Proportion of 
Debt debt to Total 
June, 191S Capital % 
$34i7i5 Empire 
5,765 G. States 51 
21,500 82 

24,100 41.4. 

7.685 47-S 

32,500 46.4 

1 At the close of 1917 M. Louis Marin prepared for the Chamber 
of Deputies in France an elaborate document, dealing with the 
financial position of the various nations engaged in the war. As- 
suming generally the same rate of expenditure per month since as 
for the period up to which each estimate is given, Mr. Villiers has 
been able to prepare the following tables, which give the minimum 
cost of the war to the great Continental belligerents, assuming that 

[174] 



National 


National 


Capital 


Debt 


Germany $80,000 
Austria- 


1912 
$1,170 Empire 
3 765 German States 


Hungary 26,250 
France 58,330 
Italy 16,170 
Russia 69,000 


3,970 
5,060 
2,685 
4,730 



Amount needed 

Revenue to meet interest 

1912 Neiu Debt alone 

Germany $ 705 Empire 

1,660 States $1,760 

Austria-Hungary 1,070 975 

France 920 940 

Italy 570 330 

Russia 1,655 1,390 

But there is a fourth course which is in fact, a dis- 
guised form of repudiation and confiscation, and 
which will almost certainly be resorted to : Inflation 
of the currency by the public manufacture of money. 
War finance has revealed means of doing this while 
maintaining a fictitious redeemability in gold. This 
path is likely to be farther explored with a conse- 
quent further expansion of prices. If only the sys- 
tem can be maintained long enough, interest will be 
paid, public debts will be redeemed, in inflated 
money. The war bond-holders will get a good deal 
less in real wealth for their bonds than these repre- 
sented when the government accepted and used the 
money. It will, as I have said, be confiscation with- 
out compensation, but disguised and haphazard, fall- 
ing most heavily upon those least able to bear it. 

That process might imaginably be linked to the de- 
vice of an international pooling of Allied war debts. 
We may, for instance, come to the rescue of France 
financially by some plan of the internationalization 
of debt. Such a plan might be linked to the scheme 
of a League of Nations and in some of its aspects 
be attractive. But it would be likely to mean the 

it had ended on June 30th, 1918. In the case of Germany, an 
official estimate by Dr. Lentze, the German Finance Minister, is 
taken as basis. 

[175] 



perpetuation of the capitalist system by international 
action, particularly if the diplomatic tradition of 
semi-secret arrangements between states, as opposed 
to public discussion as between peoples through rep- 
resentative machinery, dominates the futu.'e League 
of Nations, or Superstate. The plan would attach 
to that idea the pull of great financial interests, but it 
would be a factor of conservatism and authoritarian- 
ism, tending to make internationalism the bulwark, 
not of democracy, but reaction. It is a scheme for 
democrats, not to reject, but to watch with every 
vigilance. 

Here then, will be the situation on the morrow of 
war. The belligerent states will find themselves still 
in possession of the main sources of their material 
wealth (except the energy of the best of their young 
men). The mines, fields — for the most part — 
most of the factories and railroads will still be intact. 
Despite the need of renewing plant and the scarcity 
of certain raw materials, the populations will still be 
in a position to feed, and clothe themselves. But the 
problem of re-establishing the precise distribution of 
wealth called for by the war debts, will, from the 
nature of the figures already given, obviously be be- 
yond them. Devices of disguise will be resorted to. 
Public debts will be paid in inflated — that is in partly 
fictitious — money. When paid, much will be taken 
back in the form of income tax. Wealth, which is 
clearly due to communal activities will be reserved 
for the community. And at each turn the question of 
social right, in the light of the compulsory sacrifice 
of life made by millions to whom life has meant 

[176] 



most, will be hotly debated. If we are to avoid some 
very evil developments in ideas and political conduct 
we must somehow fit our generation for that debate. 
Otherwise, better things than the ancient institutions 
of mihtarism and capitalism may suffer therein. 



[177] 



CHAPTER VI 

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE IN SOCIAL CHANGE 

The end of the old fatalism which implies that we must 
" take the world as we find it," and that we cannot remake it. 
Some of the results that we may expect from the cheapening 
of life, the contempt of danger, the re-casting of moral stand- 
ards, and the spirit of revolution which the war has produced. 
The " strenuous life " in times of peace, and its social and 
political implications. 

" Every sign of these terrible days of war and 
revolutionary change, when economic and so- 
cial forces are being released upon the world, 
whose effect no political seer dares venture to 
conjecture, bids us search our hearts through 
and through and make them ready for the birth 
of a new day — a day, we hope and believe, of 
greater opportunity and greater prosperity for 
the average mass of struggling men and women, 
and of greater safety and opportunity for chil- 
dren. . . . The men In the trenches . . . will, 
it is likely, return to their homes with a new 
view and a new impatience of all mere political 
phases, and will demand real thinking and 
sincere action." — Woodrow Wilson. 

A PREVIOUS chapter attempted to indicate one 
of the most fundamental differences between the 

[178] 



old order of ideas which belonged to the individualist, 
capitalist, laissez-faire society of the nineteenth cen- 
tury and those which are coming to mark the twenti- 
eth century: a certain social fatalism which charac- 
terized the former is, despite much Marxian " eco- 
nomic determinism," absent from the latter. 

The individualist and laissez-faire political econ- 
omy appealed continually to certain iron " laws," 
which, it was implied men could not alter, or at least 
could only interfere with on pain of disaster. In- 
deed, the greatest mischief of the individualist con- 
ception was not the implication that the individual 
is all important. He is. The State was made for 
man, not man for the State. The mischief of the 
old doctrine resided in the implication that if the in- 
dividual went his way and let things work out for 
themselves, by some sort of happy chance, without 
any conscious control of collective action, things 
would work out for good. 

That was a very thinly disguised fatalism; It aban- 
doned any real attempt at conscious control of the 
direction of society. To say that societies grow and 
are not made, was to Imply that the progress is 
largely beyond our will. " Who, by taking thought, 
can add a cubit to his stature? " 

The newer attitude is less helpless. The more 
modern forms of socialism at least imply that It de- 
pends on us, or our conscious action, collectively de- 
termined, what kind of society we should have. It 
implies that we are arbiters of our own destiny; that 
we need not " take the world as we find it," but that 
we can, in large part make the world as we will it. 

[179] 



We have come to realize that the direction taken by 
social development depends largely upon our minds 
and intelligence. 

And it Is that which makes it important to enquire 
into the factors which shape our will. 

One may hear it asked: What is the use of at- 
tempting to forecast so imponderable, perhaps in- 
calculable, a thing as the psychology which will fol- 
low the war? 

Has the war then taught us so little that we have 
failed to realize that an indispensable part of states- 
manship Is some understanding of the feelings which 
grow up among great groups of men — feelings 
which differing circumstances make It difficult for 
other groups to understand? We have seen Ger- 
man statesmanship brought to ruin from a failure to 
take Into due account so Imponderable a thing as the 
" feelings" of Alsatians, Poles, Austrian Slavs; or 
of the world In general about such things as the in- 
vasion of Belgium and the sinking of the Lusitanta. 
And we have seen our own statesmanship almost 
wreck our cause by failure to anticipate in some de- 
gree, the growth of great moral forces in Russia; less 
disastrously in Ireland. All the belligerents have 
failed, to their own cost, to enter Into the feelings of 
certain groups with whose co-operation their suc- 
cess was bound up; to examine the Ideas of justice 
out of which those feelings grew. It is certainly 
true that millions of Englishmen, who would hon- 
estly desire to do justice, say, to Irishmen or to Rus- 
sians, simply cannot understand why such and such 
Irish and Russian demands should be made at all; 

[i8o] 



and It Is that failure which has precipitated political 
mistakes for which we have paid very definite costs. 

The part of wisdom is surely to avoid as far as 
possible similar failures to understand what may be, 
to some of us, a strange point of view, in dealing with 
those millions of young men who will return, as 
President Wilson has warned us, with " a new im- 
patience." 

Previous chapters have attempted to bring into re- 
lief one great fact: The demonstration which the 
war has furnished of the economic feasibility of col- 
lectivlst measures on a large scale; and the inevitabil- 
ity of widespread resort to this argument: If the 
collectlvist system can succeed even relatively In all 
the strain and stress of war, applied In haste and 
without due preparation, It can certainly be made to 
succeed when applied at leisure In peace. 

We have seen further that in the attempt to ensure 
success young men who have been called upon to give, 
if needs be, their lives for the future welfare of their 
nation, will not hesitate to demand that others shall 
give increasingly of their surplus wealth. 

Now this constitutes a new fact — bearing upon 
what Is often the most decisive of all elements in 
political events: the element of JVill. 

Is such and such a thing possible as a social ar- 
rangement? The true answer so often is that it is 
possible If we believe it to be so; Impossible if we 
believe it to be impossible. The greatest of all prag- 
matists has Illustrated what at first sight looks like 
a piece of political Christian Science, in these terms: 

I am climbing in the Alps [says William James] and have 
[i8i] 



had the ill luck to work myself into a position from which 
the only escape is by a terrible leap. Being without similar 
experience 1 have no evidence of my ability to perform it suc- 
cessfully; but hope and confidence in myself make me sure 
that I shall not miss my aim, and nerve my feet to execute 
what, without those subjective emotions, would have been 
impossible. But suppose that on the contrary the emotions 
... of mistrust predominate. . . . Why then I shall hesi- 
tate so long that at last, exhausted and trembling, and launch- 
ing myself in a moment of despair, I miss my foothold and 
roll into the abyss. In this case, and it is one of an immense 
class, the part of wisdom is to believe what one desires; 
for the belief is one of the indispensable preliminary condi- 
tions of the realization of its object. There are cases where 
faith creates its own justification. Believe, and you shall be 
right, for you shall save yourself ; doubt, and you shall again 
be right, for you shall perish. 

The very knowledge that the thing can be done will 
be the essential element in the formation of the will 
to do it. It is the element of Will which distin- 
guishes the condition of war time, from the condition 
of peace time. 

The peculiarity of war with a powerful enemy is 
that he will not wait. The Kaiser asked, by the 
menace of his armies, forty miUion dollars a day 
from the British people. It was " impossible," but 
he got It. To the social adjustments made necessary 
for the purposes of national defence, all programmes 
and theories contributed. We have taken a bit of 
Guild Socialism here, of German State Socialism 
there, of Feudal Paternahsm or Eighteenth Century 
Protectionism, or Advanced Feminism elsewhere. 
All these reconciliations would have been impossible 

[182] 



but for the constant pressure of the enemy, and the 
incessant and Insistent need of defeating him. 

In peace time this corrective of dissipated effort 
and divided purpose Is not at work. Governments 
may be as much afraid of popular destitution as they 
are afraid of the Germans, but they are not afraid 
of that famlhar enemy in quite the same " he'll break 
through tomorrow morning " kind of way. To get 
things done by Governments — even quite simple 
things — there must be an incessant drive or stimulus 
hke that furnished by the danger of the enemy's vic- 
tory : a stimulus which makes it possible to reconcile 
or amalgamate rival solutions. 

We have demonstrated that the obstacles which 
stand in the way of a vast change for the better in 
the standard of living are not primarily physical at 
all, but moral. They are difficulties of will, of pur- 
pose. Given the will, the way to perform economic 
miracles has a habit of being found. We see that 
we have the physical means at our disposal for the 
abolition of poverty, and that the one thing needed 
for their successful employment to that end is the 
real determination to use them as resolutely and 
ruthlessly as we would use them for the defeat of a 
military enemy. 

Such a lesson — once the feasibility of a standard 
of life so different from the past as to make possi- 
ble a new era Is plainly manifest — is not likely 
to be lost upon a democracy at last in earnest. 
Some of the war methods will be applied to peace 
needs. And if the results are not forthcoming the 

[183] 



workers will know that it Is because the stimulus Is 
lacking. And they will attempt to supply the 
stimulus. 

" If you can't do it, we shall try to do it ourselves. 
We know now that revolutionary methods can be 
made to work. And we intend to try." 

Suppose it fails? 

We shall point out, with bated breath, that in such 
a contingency, trade will have been gravely disturbed, 
securities will have fallen in value, the stock exchange 
will be in a panic — and much more to the same 
effect. 

We shall be saying It to men who, at the call of 
the nation, have had to abandon their civil callings, 
often give up completely their contemplated careers, 
leave their children, their wives and dependents; 
be ready to throw everything away, including limb 
and life; men who for years perhaps, have seen their 
comrades give their lives at the simple command of 
a youthful officer; seen tens of thousands of youths 
sacrificed in order to try a military experiment which 
failed, as at Gallipoli and elsewhere. 

And having borne all that, to the end that their 
children might know a new world, they are told that 
their attempts to make it must be abandoned because 
the money market might be disturbed. 

It Is fairly safe to say that they will be unim- 
pressed. 

"Suppose It does fail? Will the effort cost ten 
million lives ? What will the effort cost 1 Disturb- 
ance, loss of money, some discomfort, some hard- 

[184] 



ship? You tell that to those who have fought for 
you in Flanders and Galllpoll? " 

For years before the war those of us who tried to 
pave the way to a world order which should render 
war unnecessary were everlastingly treated to a very 
familiar form of sermonizing. If war was abolished 
where would human life find its hardships, dangers, 
strenuousness ? Without its *' bracing " influence we 
should all become soft, flabby, degenerate. Mr. 
Roosevelt for a generation has talked and written 
on this need for the " Strenuous Life." The editor 
of the London Spectator put the case in some such 
words as these : " Once let men get the idea that 
they can eat and drink securely in their pig sties un- 
disturbed, and they will become the most despicable 
of all creatures." 

WiUiam James himself stated the case in these 
terms : ^ 

" The military party denies neither the bestiality, 
nor the horror, nor the expense; it only says that 
these things tell but half the story. It only says that 
war is worth these things, that, taking human nature 
as a whole, war is its best protection against its 
weaker and more cowardly self, and that mankind 
cannot afford to adopt a peace economy. . . . Mili- 
tarism is the great preserver of our Ideals of hardi- 
hood, and human life without hardihood would be 
contemptible. . . . This natural feeling forms, I 
think, the Innermost soul of army writings. With- 
out any exception known to me, militarist authors 

^McClure's Magazine, August, 1910. 
[185] 



take a highly mystical view of their subject, and re- 
gard war as a biological or sociological necessity." 

James made an effort to indicate some " moral 
equivalent"; some method by which men normally 
without war, might find a means of satisfying their 
thirst for change, adventure, sacrifice, and even dan- 
ger. He bethought himself of a social and indus- 
trial conscription: young men compelled to give a 
year or two of service in dangerous trades, in mines, 
sea fishery, life-boat stations and the like. 

But is not the opportunity of making life less dull, 
more adventurous, more full of hardship and sacri- 
fice, furnished most abundantly by vast social experi- 
ments which have in them the chance of failure? 
Why not adventure, not into wholesale killings which 
leave mankind pretty much as it was before, but into 
changes that may give it a new life ? 

In any case that will be the spirit of many who 
will return from an experience in which they have 
been habituated to great risks, to a contempt of 
danger, to a cheapening of life, to a recasting of 
moral standards. 

And those of us who have not been through their 
experience must at least show ourselves ready to try 
a few great social experiments. The fact that they 
may fail will no longer be an unanswerable argu- 
ment. In the opinion of too many of those who are 
coming, the old order has altogether failed. The 
new can do no worse. 



[i86] 



PART III 
THE DANGERS 



CHAPTER I 

A SOCIETY OF FREE MEN OR THE SERVILE STATE? 

The greater the degree of socialization, the more dependent 
does the individual become upon the community. Unless 
this increased power of the community is used with restraint 
and wisdom, the new order may be wrecked by the crushing 
of the individual personality on which in the long run society 
depends. A social order which comes into being as the result 
of war measures is likely to be strongly marked by coercive 
tendencies. If it is not to be in truth the Servile State, the 
indulgence of present tendencies must be checked by a clear 
recognition of their danger. Do we love oppression and 
coercion for their own sake? What present methods might 
mean, if employed by a Labour government. 

It is obvious that a more socialized form of So- 
ciety which increases the power of the community 
over the individual, making, that is, each individual 
more and more dependent upon the collective de- 
cision, runs the risk of drifting into errors which in 
the past made the great religious and social organi- 
zations which men created, instruments for their 
own oppression and debasement. The greatest of- 
fence of those institutions was of course, that by 
destroying the capacity for sane individual judgment, 
upon which In the last resort the quality of any com- 
munity depends, they ended by rendering men in 
the mass Incapable of self government. The hls- 

[189] 



tory of Europe is largely the story of the swing be- 
tween two failures. The one has been over-organi- 
zation of authority, which checks the development 
of the individual personahty, and renders it possible 
for millions to sanction and approve the very tyran- 
nies from which they suffer — as under the mediaeval 
church and the modern Prussian state. And the 
other failure has been a laissez-faire and license tend- 
ing to social chaos and anarchy, as that which fol- 
lowed the fall of Roman authority; or which, in some 
respects, marked the early period of the industrial 
revolution. One form of stating the permanent 
problem of social organization is to say that it is the 
problem of the due adjustment between order and 
freedom. 

The danger of the development of order into 
tyranny arises from the fact that a degree of order 
and authority is an absolute need for the preserva- 
tion of any freedom whatsoever. The strength of 
any tyrannical society, like the strength of most evil 
institutions, resides, not in the element of evil in it, 
but in the element of good. The motives which 
start a people like the German on the road which 
ends in Prussianism, were assuredly not in the begin- 
ning bad motives. The people which gave us the 
kindergarten, the most delightful fairy stories in the 
world, the greatest melodies, did not fifty years ago, 
support a change of national policy because they be- 
lieved it would end in the drowning of helpless chil- 
dren and the Invasion of a peaceful nation. They 
supported their government because they had the in- 
stinct of discipline, order, and obedience to authority, 

[190] 



very strongly developed ; and because they were told, 
and probably believed, that the new policy was de- 
signed to give security and justice to their father- 
land. If, as President Wilson has recently declared, 
the unbelievable abominations of lynching are only 
possible by reason of the fact that great American 
communities are indifferent to this crime, the indif- 
ference is not due to a liking for cruelty, but to a 
hatred of negro crime. 

The fact that oppressions usually begin with the 
best of motives is one great danger. The good mo- 
tive however, is usually re-enforced by one which is 
less defensible: the hatred of those who disagree 
with us. The populations of sixteenth century 
Europe who massacred Protestants, or made the 
burning alive of heretics a public holiday, may have 
argued to themselves that they were doing it in order 
to glorify God, and to protect society from error. 
But it would be truer to say that they killed heretics 
because they hated them. The hatred of the herd 
for the man of unusual belief is a quite real and 
definite fact in human nature. 

It is related to the further fact which we have to 
take into account, namely, that men have naturally 
no hking for intellectual freedom — a real desire 
that is to accord freedom of expression for views 
with which we do not disagree, views which we re- 
gard as mischievous, wicked, dangerous and im- 
moral. We naturally desire to see the dissemina- 
tion of such views restrained, and we do not readily 
believe that any good can come of their expression.^ 

1 It is not possible to make the ordinary moral man understand 
[191] 



Which means that the real justification of intellectual 
freedom is neither obvious nor easy of general un- 
derstanding; that the truth for which Socrates 
pleaded is as far from recognition by our democra- 
cies as it was by the Athenian democracy more than 
two thousand years ago. 

The real defence of freedom of discussion is that 
it is necessary for the formation of sound judgment; 
that our minds are so made that unless we hear 
from time to time " the other side "^ — even though 
on the whole that side be wrong — we cannot see the 
truth of our own side ; put the necessary qualifications 
to our conclusions, be anything but unbalanced, 
" wrong," in fact. 

Now that is a very ancient thesis; we learned It 
from Socrates, from Milton, Mill; free and demo- 
cratic states are supposed to be founded upon it; we 
support It vociferously when stated in the abstract; 
It is part of the battle cry of the war, and the fact 
that the German doctrine does not, in practice at 
least, admit it, constitutes our main indictment 
thereof. 

Yet we do not believe this thesis the least In the 
world. For whenever a crisis comes In which it is 
above all necessary to keep a clear head and a sound 

what toleration and liberty really mean. He will accept them verb- 
ally with alacrity, even with enthusiasm, because the word tolera- 
tion has been moralized by eminent Whigs; but what he means by 
toleration is toleration of doctrines that he considers enlightened, 
and, by liberty, liberty to do what he considers right; that is, he 
does not mean toleration or liberty at all ; for there is no need to 
tolerate what appears enlightened or to claim liberty to do what 
most people consider right. Toleration and liberty have no sense 
or use except as toleration of opinions that are considered damnable, 
and liberty to do what seems wrong. — (Preface to "The Shewing 
up of Blanco Posnet") George Bernard Shaw. 

[192] 



judgment, and discipline our passions with a little ra- 
tionalism, we throw the whole thing overboard. 
Our behaviour shows that our real attitude to intel- 
lectual freedom is this : " It may be a very enter- 
taining luxury in the small problems that don't par- 
ticularly matter, but in the great crises, in those de- 
cisions upon which the future of the country rests, 
freedom of discussion must be ruthlessly suppressed." 
Thus, the editor who in France or in this country, 
should advance the argument that the orderly devel- 
opment of Europe in the future could be more se- 
curely obtained by a moderate settlement than by a 
punitive one; who, adapting President Wilson's 
phrase should declare victory dangerous because 
German freedom and democracy have more to hope 
from a stalemate than from defeat — such an one 
would be severely, perhaps ferociously punished 
for " defeatism," pro-Germanism, sedition. What 
we really believe is that discussion of such a ques- 
tion as that raised by President Wilson in 191 6, or 
as to the wisdom of meeting enemy socialists, as to 
intervention in Russia, the recognition of the Bol- 
sheviks, air raid reprisals, the character of the peace 
terms and a hundred and one other decisions, con- 
nected with the waging of the war and the making 
of the peace, should not be allowed. 

Now it may well be that this decision as to the 
danger of public discussion is the right one; that 
such discussion should be limited to small matters, 
and that in great ones the government should have 
the right and the power to compel compliance with 
its view. 

[193] 



But my point is that that decision Itself has been 
arrived at without discussion. It is simply ridicu- 
lous to say that we have weighed and answered the 
arguments of Mill and Socrates about the need of 
discussion for the discovery of the right course. 
We should never dream of bothering ourselves with 
their musty old arguments. As manly, red-blooded 
and patriotic folk we have a very strong feeling in- 
deed about these cowardly pacifists and their snivel- 
ling talk of being kind to the dear, good Germans, 
and we are determined that anything resembling their 
pestiferous doctrines — even though covered up with 
high brow intellectualism — shall be stamped out 
without mercy. To want to argue about it is itself 
a proof of pro-Germanism. 

And we don't argue about it; we lock the arguer 
up. 

We have come to have a very strong feeling about 
this thing, and have acted on that feeling, not be- 
cause we even pretend to have thrashed it out, pro 
and con, in our minds. Again, the very disposi- 
tion so to do would condemn us as Indifferent pa- 
triots.^ 

1 In the New York Times Magazine of April 7, 1918, Professor 
Alfred M. Brooks, Professor of Fine Arts in the University of In- 
diana, publishes, " at the request of the National Security League," 
an article telling how we may detect traitors who, he warns, will 
all " meet a traitor's fate." In a general way, he tells us, they 
may be known by the fact that: "They seek to darken all counsel 
by words. They pride themselves on calm of judgment and warn 
us against ' hysteria ' as the deadliest sin of the age. Heat of 
feeling, and force of language in connection with the Germans' 
taking hostages, or putting women and children in .the front line 
of their advance so that the enemy shall have to shoot down their 
own wives and babies, is ' hysteria,' according to them. 

" The arguments and assertions of this class all go back to a few 
formulas easy to learn, and easy to detect whenever the war is 

[194] 



But that feeling upon which we have acted can at- 
tach itself to other things besides the partisanship of 
war. The past has taught us that it can attach it- 
self as violently to the partisanship of religion; and 
Russia is teaching us, as France and other countries 
have taught us in the past, that it can attach itself to 
the partisanship of social upheavals. Freedom of 
discussion as a principle stands in the way of satisfy- 
ing a deep, urgent, clamant thirst or desire; the de- 
sire to dominate those who challenge our will, who 
oppose what we believe is right. That desire is a 

broached. Once familiar with these formulas and we have an un- 
failing test of the actual, as well as the potential, traitor ; a reagent, 
so to speak, which immediately makes known the presence of 
treason." 

The most damning formula of all, he tells us, is " We should 
forgive our enemies." Every one capable of pronouncing that " is 
an enemy of the United States." Other tests are less sweeping. 
Yet all belong to the same group; the group made up of pacifists 
and all other pro-Germans. " To waste breath distinguishing be- 
tween these two reminds one of Dr. Johnson's famous remark upon 
the futility of discussing precedence in the case of a flea and a 
louse. 

"The only safe rule is to regard all of these as unconditional 
traitors. But what we need more than rules for regarding them 
is a rule for detecting them. The lair of these craven beasts is 
everywhere. At one time he is an ex-college President, and again 
he is an editor. Now he is a minister, now a professor, now a 
grade teacher. Frequently he is the well-to-do citizen, in business, 
or retired; sometimes the rich widow of a publisher, or a judge. 
Every community has some of them ; known or doubtful suspects 
they may be termed. Every one of them is the enemy of humanity, 
and there are three excuses, none of them satisfactory, which can be 
put forth in behalf of these craven souls: The poor excuse of 
natural dulness; the poorer excuse of wishing to be absolutely fair, 
of seeing every side, and so, in the end, taking none; the poorest 
excuse of all, that, as so many of them still say, of ' just not being 
able to read about the war, it is so terrible.' All three are equally 
foolish and equally to be feared. The point to be remembered is 
that a fool is always Satan's ready tool. Whatever we_ do we 
should never allow the gentle answer of the Secret Americans to 
turn away our v/rath, or their self-assumed cloak of innocence and 
martyrdom to deceive us. Every one of them is a blubbering 
sentimentalist or a hypocrite. In either case they are the comfort- 
ers of Germany and our enemies." 

[195] 



fact in human nature like hunger, thirst, lust, anger, 
and we must face what that fact is likely to mean in 
the " new social order." 

We are often led to neglect any serious considera- 
tion of what these repressions, when employed by a 
more socialized order of society, might mean, be- 
cause we say to ourselves that their present employ- 
ment is merely temporary, strictly for the purposes 
of war, and that peace will see the restoration of all 
the old freedoms; that the people do not willingly 
sanction these repressive measures, but bear them as 
part of the war sacrifice. 

Can we honestly say that this last statement is 
true? Have either the British or the American 
people been greatly disturbed by the repressive meas- 
ures against unpopular minorities — the suppression 
of socialist newspapers, thirty years' sentences for 
Pacifist clergymen, the dismissal of Quaker school 
mistresses, the embargo on the teaching of German, 
or the playing of German music; and the like? Is 
our attitude really that " we are deeply sorry to be 
obliged to proceed against these socialists and Pa- 
cifists, and nothing but the dire need of war time 
would induce us to sanction this abandonment of the 
principles of freedom "? 

We know of course that such a statement of our 
attitude would be dishonest. We don't really be- 
lieve that the suppression of German opera will help 
the boys in the trenches, or that to spend the time of 
our state legislatures prohibiting the teaching of Ger- 
man in our schools will greatly aid the offensive on 
the western front. These things are not reasoned 

[196] 



at all; we do them for the same reason that a man 
swears at golf; they are an expression of temper. 

If that were all they might be harmless; but also 
they are the introduction of new principles into our 
state, principles that can be applied, by other parties 
in other circumstances, by the minorities that now 
suffer by them when some turn of circumstances give 
these minorities the power. We are not the least 
aware of the extent to which bit by bit we have 
adopted repression; and when made aware are in no 
temper particularly to care. 

Any one coming from the open air into a closed 
room where several persons have been sitting is as- 
tonished to find that they do not notice how close is 
the atmosphere. They may be persons liking fresh 
air, but they are quite unconscious how foul and 
heated that which they are breathing has become. 

Something similar to the surprise of this person 
from the outside would probably be in the mind of 
an Englishman or an American coming from abroad 
after an absence of a year or two; or one who, really 
remembering what was the general feeling in respect 
of certain fundamental things in national life as it 
existed before the war, compares it to that which 
now exists. That enables him to realize how vastly 
that feeling has changed, and how unconscious of the 
change are the great mass of his countrymen. 

It is not — and the illustration just used must not 
be taken as implying such a thing — that the national 
atmosphere as a whole has become bad. In many 
respects it is obviously better than before the war; 
many very splendid qualities have been developed; 

[197] 



" Tens of thousands of our young men have shown 
themselves ready to sacrifice everything, their future, 
their lives, to the cause of their country; they have 
gone to death as to a feast; our women-folk have 
suffered hardship and sorrow as readily; where 
flagrant luxury and idleness once reigned there is 
now willing toil and glad sacrifice; futile divisions 
and mean strife have given place to a unity of na- 
tional purpose that it has not known in our genera- 
tion." All this is true, and we justly enough rejoice 
in it. 

But it is curious that when we do this, we praise 
ourselves for just those qualities which the Germans 
show in an almost equal degree — the readiness of 
the men to meet death, the women sorrow and hard- 
ship, the whole people to work unitedly in the na- 
tional purpose. Indeed, the German sacrifice is 
heavier than ours; the loss of life greater, the hard- 
ship greater. The passage just given between in- 
verted commas is taken from the letter of a German 
writer telling an American friend what the war has 
done for the German people; and he added much 
more concerning such things as the revival of religion 
through Germany.^ 

1 A phenomenon which has been dealt with by Dr. A. Shadwell in 
the Hibbert Journal (July, 1916), in an article on "German War 
Sermons." He examines fifty sermons preached by thirty German 
clergymen, and these are his conclusions: — 

" It is clear from all this that the German Protestant clergy have 
seized upon the war as a great opportunity for re-affirming the 
moral law and re-establishing the authority of religious teaching, 
which has been driven more and more into the background by the 
growth of materialism and rationalism. They have a long score to 
settle on their own account with the forces of irreligion which have 
been fostered, as they always are, by material prosperity, and have 
gained a rapidly increasing hold on the German people. . . . 

[198] 



But the net result In Germany is the demonstra- 
tion, to us at least, that these things do not suffice; 
that they are compatible with the gradual crystalliza- 
tion of ends that are morally pernicious in themselves 
and a disaster to Germany and the whole world. 

This war has abundantly illustrated a truth which 
very many of us have suspected for very long, 
namely: that the exercise of authority, the repression 
of individual characteristics, the severe regimentation 
of peoples, the Prussian form of society in fact, are 
things liked for themselves by very many who pro- 
fess to the fighting to make their establishment im- 
possible. For four years throughout Europe we 
have witnessed this paradox: a war waged for the 
purpose of making the world safe for democracy 
supported most ardently, with the most ferocious 
" bitter-endism," by just those who in the past have 
never made any secret of their disbelief in democ- 
racy; their dislike and hatred of it even. This as- 

"At the same time, these pulpit utterances must not be read as 
indicating any revolt against the national regime or any weakening 
about the war. On the contrary, the preachers insist on the neces- 
sity of fighting it out, holding on to the last, and suffering all things 
to win. (It is worthy of note that at least five-sixths of the texts 
are from the New Testament and many of them from the Epistles.) 

" Now it seems to me that, taken broadly as a whole, these ser- 
mons reveal a stratum of thought and feeling in Germany which 
is not apparent from newspapers and other publications. How 
deep or broad it may be we cannot tell, but according to my experi- 
ence there is a great deal more of it than appears on the surface. 
The German clergy have not been preaching to empty churches dur- 
ing the war. And the essential feature of this stratum of thought 
is its maintenance of the moral law and the claims of conscience. . . . 

" I cannot but see in the spirit of the self-examination and high 
ideals running through these sermons the potential elements of a 
strong moral revulsion when the facts, which cannot be concealed 
for ever even in Germany, become known. Ethical principles will 
come into their own again when Force has visibly broken down, but 
not before." 

[199] 



tounding and undoubted fact has more Importance 
than we seem disposed to give to it. 

Nothing, perhaps, gives the sincere democrat who 
has supported this war as the price which the western 
democracies must pay for their hberation, more un- 
easiness than the fact that its most earnest advocates 
are those who have consistently represented the anti- 
democratic forces in European politics, and who 
have always denied that democratic government, 
peace, liberalism, internationalism are desirable 
things. If, say, in Italy, you take the Imperialists 
and the militarists of the most extravagant type, or 
in France, the Royalists, Nationalists and anti-par- 
liamentarians, in Britain, the Tariffists and the back- 
woods Tories, you will find them stridently rejoicing 
(through, for instance, their newspaper organs) that, 
whatever else the war does, it will " once for all put 
an end to the poisonous doctrines of internationalism, 
pacifism, free trade, socialism and democracy" (as 
a certain London daily recently expressed it) . 

Do these anti-democrats see in the war, not so 
much a means of national defence as a means by 
which they may hope to realize the triumph of their 
political doctrines? Their intuition has at least this 
temporary justification : their influence in every coun- 
try has become immeasurably greater since the be- 
ginning of the war, as the presence of Milners, Cur- 
zons, Balfours, Ribots and Poincares In " Liberal " 
governments testifies. 

Those who, like the present writer, have felt, and 
feel, a profound revulsion for the particular philoso- 
phy of life which, for want of a better word, we may 

[200] 



call Prussianism, will certainly have been struck by 
the fact that It is the bitterest anti-Germans, those 
who do not hesitate to proclaim their hate of the 
German nation and their desire for vengeance, who 
are themselves most ready to adopt the Prussian 
philosophy and methods and to see them Imposed 
upon Britain. You can put this to a ready test. 
Make a mental Inventory either of private friends 
or of pubhc men, who, even before the war, were in 
favour of Conscription, were contemptuous of peace 
ideals, of internationalism, of "pacifist prattle"; 
who rejected the Idea that the nation could ever 
make Itself secure by anything but its own preponder- 
ant strength, who endorsed the idea that the claims 
of a man's country — his state — should come be- 
fore all other social or moral claims whatsoever, who 
upheld the general principle of " my country right 
or wrong," and rejected the idea of any obligation 
to foreigners or a world order, who believed in the 
divine mission of their state to dominate the world 
for the world's benefit, but who also believed that by 
Protection and similar devices foreigners should be 
excluded from equal share in the benefits of its pre- 
ponderance; who believed that struggle between na- 
tions was the law of life and as Inevitable as death, 
and who, for all these reasons, put first the military 
strength of the nation, and favoured Its organization 
on a militarist basis with all that Involved In the 
way of the extension of State control and the limita- 
tion of civil freedom and Individual initiative. 
There were, and are, large numbers of Influential 
Englishmen and Americans with political ideas of 

[201] 



just that order. And when you have completed your 
list you will find that it corresponds pretty exactly 
with the membership of the Anti-German Union or 
at least includes all those obsessed by the most fero- 
cious of " anti-Hun " sentiment. Yet the general 
philosophy would give us a State so like the Prus- 
sian State that, as an English satirist has suggested, 
the simplest way of realizing their ideas would be to 
hand over the job to the Prussians.^ 

There is no reason to doubt the entire genuineness 
of the hatred of these Anglo-Prussians for their cor- 
responding type in Germany. History furnishes 
abundant proof that no real difference of ideal or 
outlook or race is necessary for the formation of 
rival groups that, circumstances favouring, will 
throw themselves at one another with suicidal fury. 
The struggles of Italian cities, the devastating wars 
of the Spanish- American Republics (communities of 
the same languages, origins, racial mixtures), are 
just a few Illustrations that spring to one's mind. 

The things which we have commonly In our mind 
as constituting the main objection to Prussianism are, 

1 The Daily Mail having declared that "we want a Government 
which will stick at nothing which will win the war," Mr. J. C. 
Squire retorts: — 

"At nothing, Harmsworth, nothing? 

.... But pause, proud Lord, and think 

did we resort 

To any measure of whatever sort, 

To bullying, lying, wanton butchery, 

To every kind of paying atrocity; 

Might not seditious men who have no sense 

Urge that the two contending Governments 

Should cease to chant unmeaning Hymns of Hate 

Lay down their arms and just amalgamate?" 
[202] 



in large part, things which we shall in any case be 
led by force of circumstances to adopt. We have 
been apt, for instance, to rail at the order, the regi- 
mentation and regulation of the individual's comings 
and goings implied in the German system. But we 
are being brought to something similar in any case 
not so much by our Government, as by the material 
conditions of our civilization. In the old days of 
the sailing ships and the stage coach, men lived a life 
in which " the time o' day didn't matter." A week 
or two's delay on a foreign journey, a day or two's 
delay in a home one, an hour or two's incorrectness 
in the clocks, made little difference. There were no 
microbes In those days. In a country of small towns 
and sparse population in no hurry, exactitude, order, 
promptitude and scientific cleanliness could really be 
disregarded. In our days we must regard them. 
We must come and go to the minute, we must keep 
to the right on the pavement, we must get on the 
motor 'bus at the regulation spot, we must mind the 
microbes, we must catch the 8.18 in the morning, 
not because the Government commands it, but be- 
cause a vast and closely-packed population living by 
machinery must observe order, system and hygiene, 
or no one could go about his business or earn his 
living, or be sure of not being killed, or be secure 
against devastating epidemics. 

Indeed, the question here suggested has been 
pushed by those whom no one accuses of being " pro- 
German," very much farther than I have pushed it. 
" An immense note of interrogation hangs over the 
theory that the principle of free co-operation can 

[203] 



secure for democracy the highest degree of effi- 
ciency," says Mr. Wells. Criticizing some of the 
conclusions of Professor van Gennep as to the ef- 
fectiveness of that form of national organization 
which has marked the western democracies of 
Europe, Mr. Wells says: " If the present Govern- 
ments of Great Britain and the United States are the 
best sort of Governments that democracy can pro- 
duce, then Professor Ostwald is much more right 
than Professor van Gennep is prepared to confess." 

He goes on: 

" There can be little doubt which side has achieved 
the higher collective efficiency. It is not the western 
side. ... It Is no use denying that the Central 
Powers were not only better prepared for this war 
at the outset, but that on the whole they have met 
the occasion of the war as they have so far arisen 
with much more collective Intelligence, will-power, 
and energy than any of the Allies, not even excepting 
France. They have succeeded, not merely In meet- 
ing enormous military requirements better, but In 
keeping the material side of their national life 
steadier under greater stress." ^ 

And Mr. Wells concludes that If really the pres- 
ent Governments of Great Britain and the United 
States are the best sort of Governments that democ- 
racy can produce, then democracy Is bound " if not 
this time, then next time or the time after, to be 
completely overcome or to be superseded by some 
form of authoritative State organization." 

About the middle of 191 6 the present wiiterpub- 

1 London Nation, July 24, 1915. 

[204] 



llshed in England a review of certain tendencies. It 
may be worth while for the American reader to judge 
how far some of its passages could apply to Ameri- 
can conditions; such passages for instance, as these: 

All criticism of this growing tendency to re- 
pudiate the ideas of toleration and freedom upon 
which we used to pride ourselves, is met by the 
declaration that these new repressions and intoler- 
ances are necessary for the purposes of the war; 
that we acquiesce unwillingly in them as a necessary 
war measure. Is it true that we resort to such 
measures unwillingly? Is there not much evidence 
which would go to show that we are coming to take 
pleasure in repression and the infliction of hardship 
upon those we don't like — unpopular, minorities, 
enemy aliens within our power — for its own sake? 

Note some of the problems upon which the na- 
tion, the newspapers, the House of Commons, the 
government are spending their time. There was a 
formal question in the House the other day as to 
whether German officer-prisoners had been allowed 
to ride in first class railway carriages, and quite a 
debate on it; another as to whether it was true that 
orders had been given to minimize noise in the neigh- 
bourhood of an internment camp for the sake of sick 
prisoners in the infirmary; another as to whether 
enemies killed in air raids had been accorded mili- 
tary honours at their funeral. These criticisms of 
the government by the super-ps^fiots do not help to 
win the war. It is a military asset, for very obvious 
reasons, to treat your prisoners well. No earthly 
useful purpose is served by spending the time of 

[205] 



members, government officials, officers and soldiers 
on matters of this kind. Yet members know that it 
is immensely popular to raise just that kind of ques- 
tion, and that they gain credit with their constituents 
by doing it. The Evening News for days carried on 
a hectic campaign against some English people who 
had taken the children of interned Germans into their 
homes and with clothing and comforts had helped 
destitute enemy aliens. One would have supposed 
that here was an action of which the nation might 
well be proud, as showing how different is our con- 
duct to that of the Germans. But against these Eng- 
lish men and women, popular papers of immense cir- 
culation organize a tearing and raging campaign of 
vituperation and abuse. Flaming headlines 
throw at those whose crime it is to have helped main- 
tain our reputation for chivalry, mercy, and kindli- 
ness such vituperative epithets as " Hun-Coddlers " 
and " Pro-Germans." There are strident appeals 
to the government to " stop this scandal " of showing 
a little kindness to forlorn and helpless children 
whose crime of being German is not theirs. Does 
Lord Northcliffe really think that that sort of cam- 
paign will help to win the war? But we must admit 
that it is enormously popular and certainly helps to 
sell his papers. 

" What has all this sentimentalism to do with the 
problem of freedcWln our own society? " 

It has everything .0 do. For freedom — and not 
alone freedom but in the long run order, and good 
social organization as well — suffers most from the 
feelings of hostility latent in all of us towards men 

[206] 



of opposing opinions, political or religious. Indulge 
and sanction these passions which lie at the root of 
intolerance, and we shall have a community in which 
difference of opinion is no longer possible, in which 
dominant groups will use their power to coerce their 
political opponents: and that is the end of freedom 
and democracy. Without toleration, so unnatural 
to man, so slowly and painfully developed, there can 
be no democracy. 

This curious transformation of feeling — which is 
bringing us to hate the very qualities we used to be 
proud of — is shown particularly in the virtual aban- 
donment of a tradition upon which, but a year or 
two since, we were apt to look as the foundation 
stone of all we most valued in our political life ; that 
upon which the great movements of a thousand years 
of English history have been built: Freedom — of 
the person, of the mind, of conscience, of speech. 
If we surrendered these things with evident regret 
as a dire necessity of war, one could look on the 
matter with some hopefulness. But no one can hon- 
estly pretend that we enforce these measures against 
Socialist newspapers or conscientious objectors with 
regret. To appeal now to an ideal which has ani- 
mated generation after generation of Englishmen in 
the past, which dethroned kings, upset dynasties, 
brought the country to civil war, which drove the 
most stalwart among our stock to the renunciation 
of the fatherland and exile in a new world, provokes 
now only impatience and derision, particularly, per- 
haps, among the official guardians of conscience. 
The pillars of organized religion have taken an at- 

[207] 



titude which Is one of open hostility to those guilty 
of so inconvenient a thing as invoking the categoric 
imperative. There are more Englishmen in gaol or 
suffering crippling civil disability today " for con- 
science' sake " than, perhaps, in any period of the 
Test Acts, and ninety-nine out of a hundred of us 
are not even aware of the fact, and would probably 
deny it.^ 

The importance of all this lies not, of course, in 
the individual hardship inflicted. In a world where 
suffering and sacrifice, to say nothing of life or jus- 
tice, are held as cheaply as they are today, it is, in so 
far as the individual is concerned, a small thing that 
a few thousand conscientious objectors should starve 
or go to prison; that English teachers and men of 
letters of international reputation should be reduced 
to penury. The hardship does not matter. 

But what does matter is that the habit of tolerating 
this sort of thing is bound, sooner or later, to destroy 

1 Here are some convictions in this country under the American 
Espionage and other war Acts: 

The Reverend C. A. Waldron, fifteen years for preaching that 
Christ did not approve the war, and for circulating a religious 
pacifist pamphlet; Harold Mackley, fifteen years for disloyal re- 
marks in conversation, both at Burlington, Vt. ; Daniel Wallace, at 
Davenport, Iowa, twenty years for speech on conscription and the 
war; Frederick Kraft (former Socialist candidate for Governor), 
five years and $i,ooo at Trenton, N. J., for criticism of conscription 
in a street corner speech ; Vincente Balbas, eight years and $4,000 
fine for an editorial in his paper opposing the drafting of Porto 
Ricans who had declined U. S. citizenship; at Minneapolis, J. A. 
Petersen, Republican nominee for U. S. Senate, four years for 
speeches and articles during their campaign; at Sioux Falls twenty- 
six Socialists sentenced from one to two years for circulating a 
petition charging unfair administration of the draft; at Sioux Falls, 
Wm. J. Head, State Socialist Secretary, sentenced to three years for 
circulating a petition for the repeal of the draft law; at Des Moines, 
D. T. Blodgett, twenty years for circulating leaflet advocating not 
re-electing Congressmen who voted for conscription. These are 
fair samples of a great many similar cases. 

[208] 



that political morality, that sense of playing the 
game, which has made British democracy a possibil- 
ity, and has in some measure set the standard of self 
government throughout the world; that the quality 
of life which we associate with free society, and 
which renders possible a certain quality of men, self- 
reliant, and capable of Individual judgment, will have 
been fundamentally altered. 

Since that was written there has been a curious 
development of the situation In England, a develop- 
ment the history of which It is certainly worth while 
for Americans to note. 

At the beginning of the war the government 
adopted the principle of restraining and controlling 
newspaper comment. The result of that policy has 
been to place the government absolutely within the 
control, not of the entire press of the nation, but of 
a section of It, the section which ninety educated 
Englishmen out of a hundred before the war would 
have declared to be the part which should on no 
account dictate public policy — the sensational and 
less responsible part. 

It is no mystery how that has been brought about. 

Public opinion in the early stages of war. In every 
nation, is always In favour of a " truce to discussion." 
We remind one another then that the time for words 
has passed and the time for action come. " Talk " 
is disparaged. We demand the union sacree. And 
almost always is that rule first broken by those who 
at the beginning were most Insistent upon its enforce- 
ment. In the case of England, a party truce was 

[209] 



declared at the outbreak of war and the feeling 
against public criticism of the government or its pol- 
icy was intense. Such public men as attempted any- 
thing resembling it were indeed driven from public 
life for a time, mainly by the influence of the group 
of papers controlled by Lord Northcliffe.^ For 
these papers, and others like them it will be noted, 
maintained their right to criticise policy and govern- 
ment (as Mr. Roosevelt does In this country). It 
was the Liberal papers that were silenced. For two 
years the public heard the discussion of policy from 
one side only: the Chauvinist and Nationalist. The 
Liberal and Internationalist side had to remain un- 
expressed. It was not difficult to see what would 
happen: Mr. Asquith's government was driven 
out arid replaced by another largely as the result of 
the criticisms of Lord Northcllffe's papers.^ 

Now whether we take the view that that result 
was good or bad we justify public discussion. If the 
result was good, If the war was being mismanaged, 
the country was saved by virtue of public discussion 
— by virtue of abandoning the rule of silence. If 
we take the view that the result was bad we have a 

^ " It was the predominance of the Northcliffe and Clemenceau 
schools that made the Anglo-French diplomacy toward Russia 
so disastrous. It prevented Stockholm, overthrew Kerensky and 
alienated the Bolsheviki. It has been under the influence of the 
same type of thinkers that the Entente war aims have been stated 
in so geographical a manner that even the President has become 
involved in complex boundary claims. . . . 

" Unintelligence in war aims goes hand in hand with an ostrich 
policy about the facts. Journalists who tell the truth about condi- 
tions in any field of action are looked upon as weakening morale 
instead of strengthening it. This is one of the most damaging con- 
ventions now at work. Clearness of sight would help us to end 
far more than feed an ignorant optimism." — Mr. Norman Hapgood 
in the New Republic, Jan. 26, 191 7. 

[210] 



case where a government found It impossible to re- 
sist the Intervention of public judgment, although it 
must have known that judgment to be wrong. And 
if It was wrong, It must have been because the public 
judged on an Insufficient knowledge of the facts and 
made wrong conclusion concerning them; because in 
other words, public discussion was not full, had not 
all the facts, did not hear all sides. Either verdict 
pushes one to the conclusion that the public will judge 
either with or without the facts and opportunity for 
free discussion; and that the part of wisdom is to 
see that that discussion Is as full and well-founded In 
fact as possible. 

The present writer happens to have pointed out 
elsewhere something of the process of this thing: 

What the " truce to discussion " really means 
In practice is not that discussion ceases (a good 
deal might be said for that) but that all Liberal 
contribution to the discussion ceases. To re- 
alize that fact one must weigh certain elements 
of war psychology, and the psychology of dis- 
cussion. I will try not to be very abstruse. 
If you have ever taken part In a discussion of 
Protection and Free Trade during an election 
you know that when feeling has begun to run 
a little high the Protectionist becomes abso- 
lutely convinced that the obvious blindness of 
the Free Trader to the protectionist truth can 
only be accounted for by the fact that, by some 
moral perversion, the Free Trader is more con- 
cerned with the welfare of foreigners than with 
that of Americans. I need not remind you 

[211] 



that for years every Free Trader in America 
was an Anglomaniac, if Indeed he had not been 
suborned by the gold of the Cobden Club. 
Now, if in times of profound peace an honest 
attempt to find the best policy for one's own 
country can in this way be interpreted as hos- 
tility to one's country, merely because the pro- 
posed policy is also good for the foreigner, 
how much more must we expect that kind of 
misapprehension in the immeasurably fiercer 
passions of war time. It is natural, human, 
excusable, a phase of the instinct of pugnacity 
and self-preservation, an essential element of 
war psychology, perhaps indispensable to na- 
tional morale. 

But note how it operates in the case of the 
press. We agree not to discuss peace terms. 
A paper of large circulation has an article 
demonstrating that there will never be any 
peace in the world until the enemy nation Is 
utterly destroyed; that the people are as much 
to blame as the government. It strikes nobody 
that this Is a discussion of policy or peace terms. 
A rival paper has an article arguing that no 
territory must be taken from the enemy and 
that we have no quarrel with the enemy people. 
In this case we realize, not only that it is a dis- 
cussion of terms, but a very irritating one, with 
a pro-German colouring to boot. And we 
have a general Impression that that sort of 
thing ought to be suppressed. Now, when to 
the handicap on the liberal paper is added the 
[212] 



prospect of legal penalties its position becomes 
hopeless. Incidentally, when we suppress an 
obscure socialist paper, the importance of the 
act is not in that suppression, but in the effect 
that it has upon the policy of much more power- 
ful papers who realize that they will have to 
look out and do not feel disposed to take any 
risks at all in such a public temper — which 
doubtless extends to government officials and 
to juries. The liberal press becomes silent and 
control of opinion passes to those papers that 
appeal to the impulsive and instinctive, rather 
than to the reflective, element. This state of 
mind which I have described is progressively 
strengthened. And a good job too, you may 
say. You might quote the movie advertisement 
to the effect that you cannot put up a good 
fight until your blood boils; so the more it 
boils the better. 

What, then, is the job of us civilians who are 
left behind and do not have to go over the top 
and do the bayoneting? It is, I think we have 
agreed, the direction of policy. If the govern- 
ment is going wrong we correct It, or replace 
it, and whether we intervene wisely or not de- 
pends upon this state of mind of ours. And 
I am not sure that boiling blood is the best 
psychological condition for that judgment; for 
the public passes upon policies, and makes a 
choice between them, not by a cold Intellectual 
analysis of their respective merits, but by virtue 
of a general state of mind and temper. 
[213] 



If we really are directing the fight in Its 
larger aspects — and I think we are agreed on 
that point — a certain balance and sanity of 
judgment rather than violent temper may be 
desirable. I believe It is a ruse of a prize 
fighter who is getting the worst of it to try and 
make his opponent really angry. Then the op- 
ponent's bad temper may compensate for his 
superior strength or ability. The toreador 
manages to reduce an opponent twenty times 
his own strength by making that opponent " see 
red." ^ 
But note what has happened today. We find the 
Northcliffe press itself complaining of the sensation- 
alism and lack of balance on the part of the public ! 
It does so over the circumstances of the Pemberton 
Billing case. The popular attitude towards that 
case would seem to show that millions of the English 
people really do believe that the German govern- 
ment owns a mysterious " black book " containing 
the names of forty-seven thousand prominent Eng- 
lishmen — including cabinet ministers — addicted to 
unnatural vice and that It holds the knowledge of 
this fact over them as a means of securing a pro- 
German policy on the part of England. The public 
character who makes this amazing discovery has be- 
come a national hero, and the type of newspaper 
which exploits that type of rumour come to have im- 
mense power in the nation. Power seems to be 
passing in some degree from the Northcliffe press to 

1 Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 
July, 1918. Report of an address delivered at a meeting of the 
Academy. 

[214] 



the press that out-NorthclIffes Northcliffe. No won- 
der we find the London Nation talking of the " col- 
lapse of the mind " of the people. 

Now quite obviously a nation in that condition, in 
which the government and its policy tend to be con- 
trolled by its least sober press and least worthy ele- 
ments, is not likely to do the best in difficult and try- 
ing moments of policy; not likely, perhaps to select 
wisely its government, to choose with discernment 
between rival candidates for power. Its political 
judgment will be defective, " unbalanced." To put 
it at its very least it has a warning for America. 

But note the difficulty: To utter that warning at 
all in any way likely to be listened to, may expose a 
journalist or an author to the very severest punish- 
ment: a large fine and a long period of imprison- 
ment. The espionage act reads: 

Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall wilfully 
utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scur- 
rilous, or abusive language about the form of government of 
the United States, or the Constitution of the United States 
or the military or naval forces, of the United States, or the 
flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or 
Navy of the United States . . . whoever shall by word or 
act support or favour the cause of any country with which 
the United States is at war, or by word or act oppose the 
cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine 
of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than 
twenty years, or both. 

Note this suggestive progression. Rose Pastor 
Stokes, In favour of the war Is condemned to ten 
years' imprisonment for sending the following letter 

[215] 



to the Kansas City Star (which, incidentally, was 
not punished for publishing it) : 

" I see that it is, after all, necessary to send a statement 
for pubhcation over my own signature, and I trust that you 
will give it space in your columns. 

" A headline in this evening's issue of the Star reads: 

" * Mrs. Stokes for Government and Against War at the 
Same Time.' 

" I am not for the Government. In the interview that 
follows I am quoted as having said : 

" ' I believe that the Government of the United States 
should have the unqualified support of every citizen in its 
war aims.' 

" I made no such statement and I believe no such thing. 
No government which is FOR the profiteers can also be FOR 
the people, and I am for the people while the government is 
for the profiteers. 

" I expect my working-class point of view to receive no 
sympathy from your paper, but I do expect that the tradi- 
tional courtesy of publication by the newspapers of a signed 
statement of correction, which even our most Bourbon papers 
grant, will be extended to this statement by yours." ^ 

Yet a year or two since President Woodrow Wilson 
wrote the following: 

" The masters of the government of the United States are 
the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United 
States." 2 

" We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, 
we have controlled development, and we nave come to be one 

^ Judge Van Valkenburgh (Western District of Missouri, May, 
191 8) stated at the outset of his charge: "The act of the defendant 
complained of is the causing to be published in the Kansas City 
Star, a daily newspaper of wide and general circulation, the fol- 
lowing letter." 

2 "The New Freedom," p. 57. 

[216] 



of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and 
dominated, governments in the civilized w^orld — no longer 
a government by free opinion, no longer a government by 
conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by 
the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant 
men." ^ 

" We must learn, w^e freemen, to meet, as our fathers did, 
somehow, somewhere, for consultation. There must be dis- 
cussion and debate, in which all freely participate." ^ 

" I am not afraid of the American people getting up and 
doing something. I am only afraid they will not." 

" I believe that the weakness of the American character is 
that there are so few growlers and kickers among us. . . . 
Difference of opinion is a sort of manadate of conscience. 
. . . We have forgotten the very principle of our origin if 
we have forgotten how to object, how to resist, how to agi- 
tate, how to pull down and build up, even to the extent of 
revolutionary practices, if it be necessary to re-adjust mat- 
ters." 3 

Assuredly America has travelled quickly and trav- 
elled far. 

But, it will be vociferated, there is all the difference 
between peace and war. Things good In peace time 
become quite Inadmissible In war. 

Is It at all certain, however, that we shall be able 
In the future, In many of the matters we are dis- 
cussing, to make a clear distinction between peace 
time and war time? 

Take the matter of conscription. It Is pretty 
definitely laid down now both In Britain and in 
America, that the teaching of the early Christian 
doctrine as to the sin of killing one's fellows, is in 

1 " The New Freedom," p. 201. 

2 " The New Freedom," p. 408. 

3 " Spurious vs. Real Patriotism," School Review, Vol. 7, p. 604. 

[217] 



effect an Incitement to the resistance of the draft, 
and must be regarded as sedition. But conscription 
will probably be the law as much of peace time as 
of war time. There is a very general demand in 
both countries that compulsory military service be 
made permanent. If we now send a clergyman to 
ten or twenty years' imprisonment for saying that 
Christ would not have killed his fellows at the orders 
of his government, and interpret such doctrines as 
subversive of the law, how will they be less subversive 
when that law has become part of the permanent 
legislation of the country? Shall we not be obliged, 
if we retain conscription, to make that particular 
interpretation of Christian doctrine illegal? 

The very righteousness of this present war blinds 
us to certain dangers of the instruments — it may 
be the very necessary instruments — which we are 
employing In the waging of it. But how very power- 
fully certain of those instruments might affect, not 
only the waging of war in war time but the shaping 
of policy In peace time, we can realize if we could 
imagine conscription having been a permanent in- 
stitution In Britain twenty or thirty years ago. 

Will the reader please note that I am not oppos- 
ing conscription, I am only Insisting upon certain dan- 
gers of its use. It may be necessary in sickness to 
employ dangerous drugs, but safety lies in being fa- 
miliar with their risks. The more it Is urged that 
conscription Is Indispensable and inevitable the more 
necessary does it become to realize the dangers of its 
normal employment. As an illustration of those 
dangers I suggest that if during the last few genera- 

I218I 



tlons England had had conscription, possessed of the 
powers with which it is already endowed the opera- 
tions of that system would have resulted inevitably 
in checking the liberal tendencies of English political 
development and strengthening the reactionary and 
Imperialist, by limiting freedom both of discussion 
and institution, and by curtailing popular right; and 
would have made English political influence in the 
world very much less beneficent than happily it is. 

That can be illustrated by an incident of recent 
British history. 

The Boer War and its sequel indicate the exist- 
ence of two opposing forces in English political de- 
velopment — in the development of Western democ- 
racy, indeed; the forces which brought on the war, 
and the opposing forces which dominated the post- 
bellum settlement. Because, of course, the final set- 
tlement which has given us a loyal and united South 
Africa was carried out by a pro-Boer government, a 
party who had bitterly fought the policy that precipi- 
tated the war, and who in a large degree reversed 
Its object. But so complete a victory of Liberal 
forces would have been impossible if the powers now 
possessed by the Government — and conscription 
would have given the Government these powers — 
had been in existence. That system would have 
strengthened Incalculably those reactionary forces 
which played so large a part in the war Itself. Let 
us see why. 

Although the Boer War Is a very controversial 
subject In English history, there are very few Eng- 
lishmen who would seriously challenge the view that 

[219] 



there entered into its motives — whether the war as 
a whole was just or not — very ugly elements of cap- 
italist exploitation, a Prussianization of English 
temper shown in a crude desire of domination, ex- 
cuse or justification of things like the Jameson Raid, 
a refusal to see an " enemy " point of view, a sys- 
tematic vihfication of the Boer character and finally, 
in the conduct of the war itself, methods which the 
Englishman who after the war became British Prime 
Minister, declared curtly to be " methods of bar- 
barism " — farm burning, concentration camps, etc. 

Now, not merely had this lapse into Prussianism 
ranged the opinion of most of the civilized world 
against England — certainly as much as it was 
against France in the Dreyfus case — but what is 
much more to the point, most English Liberals 
fought the whole policy and tendency of the war. 
The pro-Boer agitation (in which Mr. Lloyd George 
was perhaps the most violent figure) did not, it is 
true, stop the war, though it shortened it; but it 
produced a reaction against the Prussian temper so 
great that the pro-Boers, electorally triumphant 
after the war, virtually restored to the Boer Repub- 
lics their independence under the guise of responsible 
Colonial Government; and to the bitter anger of 
British junkerdom at the time, allowed the Boer 
element to become once more politically dominant 
throughout South Africa; so that within a year or 
two of the close of the war the virtual ruler of South 
Africa was the man who had led the Boer forces in 
the field against British arms. 

But that conversion of the British people, and 
[220] 



their revolt against their own Government, would 
have been impossible under conscription and the 
powers we have now given it. The war, which 
lasted nearly three years, called from first to last 
for nearly half a million men, drawn not only from 
the regular army, but from militia and irregular 
forces. Presumably those who offered their services 
for the war did not share the views of the pro-Boer 
party of the day. 

But what would have been the position of English 
soldiers under the existing powers of the State? 
The Government would, of course, take no account 
of political opinion. While the pro-Boer might be 
taken to the front, the pro-Chamberlainite might 
have been left at home. Young Liberals and Non- 
conformists were reading in Mr. Lloyd George's 
speeches that the war was a monstrous wickedness, 
tainted at its source, carried on by methods of bar- 
barism. Inflamed by all this these young men would, 
under conscription, have been sent to the veldt to 
kill Boers, burn Boer farm houses, and drive Boer 
women and children into concentration camps. 

Would they, in such conditions, have done those 
things? I can answer personally for at least some; 
they would have flatly refused. We now know — 
the 1906 election taught us that — that pro-Boerism 
had gone much deeper than was generally supposed. 
The refusal would not have been isolated and spor- 
adic, for though pro-Boerism presented what was at 
the time a minority, it was a passionate and convinced 
minority. And that minority — the editors, writers, 
bishops, professors — would certainly, some of them, 

[221] 



have followed Mr. Lloyd George in supporting that 
mutiny and encouraging it. 

What would the conscription authorities have 
done ? Shot the young conscripts, and let Mr. Lloyd 
George — the pro-Boer agitator — really respon- 
sible for their mutiny, continue unchecked? Let the 
conscript choose whether he should go to war or not? 
Then that would have been the end of conscrip- 
tion. And would the military authorities accept sur- 
render to sedition in war times ? 

There was only one thing, under conscription, to 
have done: suppress the pro-Boer agitation. For 
conscription to have worked at all in the Boer War 
would have meant a very thoroughgoing censorship 
of newspaper opinion, suppression of public meet- 
ings, control of university professors and religious 
teachers, and the suppression of the speaking and 
writing of the men who have since ruled England and 
guided her policy. 

It would have suited the Government of the day, 
of course; notably Mr. Chamberlain. He would 
not have needed to answer Lloyd George or the other 
very violent pro-Boers. He would have sent them 
to gaol. Incidentally, such a step would have been 
very popular just at the time. 

But such a course would have altered not only the 
subsequent history of the South African settlement, 
but of all English politics. The discredit which fell 
upon the authors of the Boer War and finally swept 
them from office and so completely checked the Prus- 
sian temper and tendencies, was due largely to the 
educating Influence of the pro-Boer agitation. The 

[222] 



movement which accounted for the landslide of the 
1906 election was largely a moral movement, a real- 
ization of the true character of Chamberlainite and 
Milnerite politics, due largely to just that agitation 
during the war which conscription must have sup- 
pressed. 

Let us see what is the relation of the mechanism 
of those State powers to political freedom of opinion 
in present-day circumstances. Put the thing in the 
concrete fashion of Carlyle's two Dumdrudges. 
The young man of France, or Austria, or Prussia, or 
Bavaria, having been in no way consulted as to his 
opinion concerning the matter, and with no option 
of refusal, finds himself one day confronted with 
the order to enter the trenches and kill the man op- 
posite. Now suppose, being a Prussian, he should 
say: " I don't feel justified in killing the man op- 
posite. I have followed this particular dispute be- 
tween his Government and mine, and upon my con- 
science I am not at all sure that he is wrong. I think 
there is a good deal to be said for his case. Par- 
ticularly am I a little doubtful of my case when it 
is marked by the daily slaughter of children on land 
and sea. I cannot see that I do the best service to 
my country in killing the man opposite. He may 
not be altogether right, but I am at least sure that 
he is not so wrong as to justify me in putting him to 
death or torture." 

Now, if what the Allies and their supporters have 
so often told us is at all true, Western Europe has 
taken up arms on behalf of that young heretic — to 
bring about, that is, just the moral revolution on 

[223] 




the part of his people represented in his attitude. 
Mr. Asquith has told us that the war is a spiritual 
conflict fought to defeat " a monstrous code of in- 
ternational morality " into which the German people 
have been entrapped " to the horror of mankind." 
The war was undertaken to liberate them and Europe 
from the menace of certain political doctrines and 
moralities (such as that whatever the State does is 
right, and that obligations to it overrule all others, 
and that men should be, as certain members of the 
German Government have so proudly proclaimed 
themselves, " for their country, right or wrong"), 
and to replace those dangerous doctrines by — again 
to quote Mr. Asquith — " the enthronement of the 
idea of right as the governing idea " in international 
politics. 

But if a nation is to know what is right in its re- 
lations with others it must in that matter allow free- 
dom of conscience and discussion, particularly free- 
dom to state the view of the other side. It is not 
an easy thing for even a third party to determine 
the rights and wrongs of a quarrel. As for the in- 
terested parties, it is humanly certain that each will 
be convinced he is absolutely right and the other 
absolutely wrong unless there is a deliberately cul- 
tivated capacity to " hear the other side." And, as 
Governments are made up of human beings, they too 
are just as likely to be incapable of fair and reason- 
able judgment in a case in which they are interested 
parties, unless drawn from a population that has 
cultivated the capacity for such judgment in the only 
way in which it can be cultivated — by the habit of 

[224] 



forming individual decisions based on the weighing 
of both sides; unless, in other words, they have 
learned to '* tolerate the heretic " and are dominated 
by the tradition of the need of heresy in forming 
opinion. 

Now the simple truth is that the form in which we 
have established conscription has given to the State 
such powers that it makes political heresy — opposi- 
tion to the political rehgion of the State — in inter- 
national affairs, a crime punishable with death. It 
sounds fantastic, but it is a mere statement of fact. 
Let us go back to the young conscript I have imagined 
refusing to kill the man opposi:;e. Whether he be 
German, French, Italian, Russian or Turkish, and 
whether his situation be that of a submarine com- 
mander refusing to sink Atlantic liners or an Al- 
lied aviator refusing to throw bombs at inland Ger- 
man cities, if he really persists there is only one 
result for him. He is shot. 

Conscription, to be effective, must be a conscription 
of minds as well as bodies, just when freedom of 
minds is most needed. To allow real cleavage of 
opinion concerning the justice of a State's cause to 
grow up by allowing the advocacy of a rival cause 
would be to break down national solidarity, to affect 
gravely the efficiency of the military instrument by 
tainting its morale at the source. Moreover, the 
State must take charge not only of the expression of 
opinion, but of the dissemination of facts which 
lead to the formation of opinion. And if the inci- 
dent of the trenches I have described is not com- 
moner than it is (though it is commoner than we 

[225] 



suppose it to be), it is largely because States which, 
like Germany, knowing their military business, have 
carried out the intellectual conscription, the " mobil- 
ization of the mental and moral forces of the nation," 
so thoroughly before the beginning of the war that 
the mind as well as the body of the conscript has been 
suitably drilled. The control of the Press and of 
education, of the careers of all who teach or have in- 
fluence, has been as much part of the organization 
of the nation for military purposes as the physical 
drill and regimentation. And if we wonder how 
it is that not only sixty or seventy millions of people 
in the mass, but great scientists, teachers and theo- 
logians as individuals, can subscribe to doctrines and 
support conduct which appear to the outside world 
as monstrous, it is merely because we have forgotten 
that any case, however monstrous, can be made to 
appear reasonable and acceptable if we never hear 
anything that can be said against it. 

If we think that a people like the French could 
not possibly, when a like efficiency of organization 
has had time to do its work, show a like moral result, 
then we have probably forgotten certain incidents 
of their history, even quite recent incidents like the 
Dreyfus affair and what we said about it and all 
that it meant at the time. I do not pretend of course 
that no freedom in political speculation can exist un- 
der conscription or allied systems. There has been 
freedom of political speculation of a kind in Ger- 
many, as her social contrivances like workmen's in- 
surance acts, which are models to the world and 
which we have copied, show. In the same way you 

[226] 



had periods of bold Intellectual speculation, of a kind, 
under the Inquisition. The influence of men like 
Thomas Aquinas, one of the acutest and most pene- 
trating thinkers of all time, was felt In the most 
priest-ridden period. But although you had Intel- 
lectual Innovation In the nineteenth century in Ger- 
many and in the fourteenth century In Spain and 
Italy, authority Intervened to arrest Innovation at 
just those points where it was most needed. And 
with all her political heresy the power of the military 
machine In France has undoubtedly worked to main- 
tain for the most part the old Ideas In such things 
as nationalism, patriotism — the worth of political 
sovereignty — to maintain just that group of ideas 
which of all others needs most radical modification. 
But for the momentum of the old Nationalist con- 
ceptions, which are so closely allied with the mlhtary 
organization, the result of the attempt of the Cail- 
laux ministry to compose the differences between the 
great two rival groups In Europe might have been 
very different. 

But the French, as a matter of fact, have escaped 
the full flower of the Prussian result because the cir- 
cumstances of their history during the nineteenth cen- 
tury — the fact that not once during the whole of 
that century did they have a Government sufficiently 
national to set up a national orthodoxy — made it 
impossible to organize the system on Its intellectual 
side. Since the Revolution there have always been 
in France, until this war, large groups ready to put 
certain social and moral principles above national de- 
fence, above the State. The revolutionary wars of 

[227] 



France were fought with a whole class of French- 
men opposed to them, many members of that class 
actually fighting with the enemies of France. It is 
but a symbol of what has always been in post-revolu- 
tionary France that on the news of the fall of Sedan, 
because it meant the end of the Empire, Paris was 
illuminated; and that in Paris, in the struggle of the 
Commune, more Frenchmen were killed by French- 
men than had been killed there in the war by Ger- 
mans. You had here such ingrained habit of po- 
litical heresy that no machine could readily cope with 
it. No wonder France has been Intellectually fairly 
free. Sufficient numbers of Frenchmen have always 
been ready to make national defence, the efficiency 
of the military machine, subservient to the retention 
of certain freedoms, as the Dreyfus case showed. 
But conscription — the military organization — has 
steadily fought these freedoms, and the tendency for 
the needs of the machine to override all other con- 
siderations has at times been so strong that, again 
as in the Dreyfus affair, the control of such tendency 
demanded for years at a time all the energies which 
the heirs of the liberal tradition could summon to 
the task. If, as a result of this war, France Is " na- 
tionalized " In the sense of making all political dif- 
ferences really subservient to the needs of national 
power, the increasing efficiency of the military ma- 
chine will make the next Dreyfus affair in Its out- 
come a Zabern affair. 

The question surely Is this: If the democracies 
like England and France are to put first the efficient 
working of the national military machine over a pe- 

[228] 



rlod of years, will it not be at the price of a control of 
opinion by the State, as complete as in Germany? 
And, if so, why should we expect sensibly different 
moral results? 

I am not urging that the dlfdcultles here indicated 
necessarily condemn resort to conscription in any 
circumstance whatever — that is quite a distinct 
problem — but that we must face squarely what 
permanent conscription involves. And It involves 
undoubtedly the suppression of freedom of con- 
science in the larger and deeper political problems, in 
some degree at all times, and with ruthlessness just 
at the time that such freedom is most needed. In- 
deed, the position of the modern political heretic is 
in one respect perhaps worse than was that of the 
old religious heretic. The latter, in order to be se- 
cure from the attentions of the Holy Office, had 
only to remain silent. That does not protect the 
modern heretic. He is taken out and compelled to 
kill with his own hand those whose political faith 
perhaps he shares, or himself be executed. 

Just imagine such a conception of the powers of 
the State — of the majority, that is — being applied 
to the Class War. 

We have seen as the result of conscription in Eng- 
land one very Important result : a widespread change 
of ideas in reference to the Institution of private 
property. The justice of the conscription of life 
has led to a very changed feeling as to the justice 
of the conscription of wealth. The economic 
foundation stone of society is no longer the right of 
the individual but the interest of the community. It 

[229] 



is not, as we have seen, a mere matter of Income tax. 
Out of the increase of state powers for the purposes 
of the war is coming obviously a vast permanent 
change in the relationship of the community to the 
control of public utilities like the railroads, the dis- 
tribution of necessaries like coal, means of communi- 
cation generally, insurance and so forth. All these 
economic changes carry with them great political and 
social changes. The construction for Instance, by 
the American government of what may ultimately 
be the greatest merchant marine In the world, and 
Its ownership by the state, will Involve, not only 
questions of traffic rates, and commercial policy, but 
the whole foreign policy of the nation. It Is per- 
haps the greatest experiment in socialism ever at- 
tempted by any modern state ; and it will be attempted 
by the state which of all others has been heretofore 
most hostile to Socialist tendencies. 

That change In fundamental social Ideas will have 
come as the unintended result of a " temporary " war 
measure. And what Is true of the building of ships, 
the nationalization of the railroads, an eighty per 
cent. Income tax, the control of food prices, will be 
true of more far reaching measures still, like the 
" work or fight " law; all affected by the " argument 
from conscription." Even though we abolish con- 
scription it will leave Its Indelible traces. We shall 
not be able to go back altogether to the old order. 

If we would get a forecast of what the powers of 
a socialized state might be, just note what Is In- 
volved In the principle of the " work or fight " law. 
iWhen we declare that those who do not fight shall 

[230] 



work, we must also dictate what they shall work at, 
what shall in fact, constitute work. We are doing 
so already In the case of the less fortunate socially: 
messengers, attendants, servants. Under any really 
socialist system the same rule would apply to the 
well-to-do. What are the essential occupations? 
An Inventor declares himself on the track of a great 
discovery — Inventors are always on the track of 
great discoveries, and until the discoveries are actu- 
ally made, are always regarded by their friends, 
neighbours and families as hopeless cranks. Could 
we hope that officials or commissions pledged to do 
their best for recruiting a labour army would take 
a more lenient view? As to the man thinking out 
social and moral problems — Is that " work " ? 
Could it be accepted as grounds for exemption from 
the industrial draft? Is it so accepted from bud- 
ding geniuses now in the case of the military con- 
scription? As to poetry, art, music, philosophy — 
shall we exempt self-styled poets and artists from the 
labour-conscription while their brothers toil? At 
present their exemption from labour Is their own 
risk — the risk of starvation or wearing out the pa- 
tience of their friends and family upon whom they 
may live. But no such freedom could be accorded 
under a social system In which the obligation to 
work was enforced in the same way that we now 
enforce the obligation to fight. 

We may at first sight regard all this as fanciful. 
But the application of the present temper to a Bol- 
shevist order — and the present temperamental 
tendencies are the natural forerunner of Bolshevism 

[231] 



— would give us a system in which oppressions like 
those just indicated would daily confront unpopular 
minorities. If poetry and research and music be- 
came associated in the minds of the mass with 
"counter-revolutionary" tendencies — as well they 
might — the Tribunals of the Industrial Draft could 
be depended upon to see that all bourgeois tainted 
with such anti-socialist heresies got about the same 
treatment that we now accord to conscientious ob- 
jectors to the military service. Something resem- 
bling that has already happened under the Bolshev- 
iks in Russia. 

To suppose that the feeling of our people about 
Individual freedom during the last four years In Eu- 
rope and the last eighteen months in America applies 
to war time only, and that it will suddenly cease with 
the declaration of peace, is to assume that there is 
no such thing as psychological habit or momentum. 

The directing of public opinion by governments 

— establishment of vast bureaux where officials un- 
dertake the work of " Inspiring " editors and writers, 
sending out lecturers — hundreds and thousands — 
to give the " governmental " view of policy, all this 
is a thing which five years ago we of the Western 
democracies would have looked upon with detesta- 
tion as the very negation of democratic government, 
as Incompatible with the free state. Today It does 
not excite the least hostility. It Is adopted, not as 
something we apply with keen regret as a hard neces- 
sity, but in very many cases with evident relish, or 
as something we have simply no feeling about. 
There Is no reason why the control of opinion by the 

[232] 



State (through official "news" agencies; surveil- 
lance of educational institutions, etc.) should not be- 
come an accepted practice. 

Many of these war time institutions are bound to 
survive for a very long time, not only because most 
of the arguments which justify them as war time 
measures will also justify them as a necessary part 
of preparedness for war — necessary to the proper 
maintenance of universal military service in peace 
time, for instance, — but also because the difficulties 
of demobilization will prolong for a very consider- 
able period many of the conditions of actual war. 
The re-entrance into civil life of tens of millions of 
men throughout the world; the turn over of indus- 
tries from a war basis to a peace one; the allocation 
of raw materials and their rationing; the common 
help to devastated countries like Belgium, France, 
Poland, Armenia ; the teaching of trades to millions 
of wounded and semi-incapables; the allocation of 
pensions and allowances; the adaptation of finance 
and commerce to new political and social conditions, 
all of which is a part of demobilization, must be a 
matter of some years. It implies the retention of 
vast governmental and bureaucratic if not of mili- 
tary powers. Pensions, allowances, compensations, 
will be made contingent in some degree probably 
upon " good conduct "; which will mean, in practice, 
conformity to the political opinion of the government 
for the time being. Already educational authorities, 
in England as well as in the United States, have de- 
cided that they will refuse henceforth to employ 
" conscientious objectors." A recent Act of ParHa- 

[233] 



ment disfranchises them. Later on a " Labour gov- 
ernment " grappling with its early difficulties and 
the opposition of anti-Labour — "bourgeois" and 
counter-revolutionary-groups, will not hesitate to 
take over for its own purposes existing principles and 
methods. The Labour government will maintain 
its Press Bureaux, and Committees of Public In- 
formation, but use them for the governmental in- 
doctrination of the people with the true Socialistic 
Gospel. School teachers and university professors 
who presume to criticize the new order will be re- 
moved; public men who do so will be hounded by a 
" kept " press under the lash of " the new pariot- 
ism "; the Postmasters General ^ will be empowered 
to open the letters of private persons; everybody will 
be encouraged to become a spy upon everybody else 
and to report " disloyal remarks " in private con- 
versation; and the L W. W. will constitute a Com- 
mittee of Vigilantes to listen to sermons, note the 
remarks of teachers, censor books and plays; and 
finally of course, we shall have a law that no one of 
" bourgeois associations " shall hold public office of 
any kind. And so it will go on until the new tyranny 
becomes as loathsome as the old, and the new order 
also breaks down. 

1 Section 4 of the Sedition Act reads : 

" The Postmaster General may, upon evidence satisfactory to him 
that any person or concern is using the mails in violation of any of 
the provisions of this Act, instruct the postmaster at any post office 
at which mail is received addressed to such person or concern to 
return to the postmaster at the office at vyhich they were originally 
mailed all letters or other matter so addressed, with the words 
' Mail to this address undeliverable under Espionage Act ' plainly 
written or stamped upon the outside thereof, and all such letters 
or other matter so returned to such postmasters shall be by them 
returned to the senders thereof under such regulations as the Post- 
master General may prescribe." 

[234] 



This Is not mere fanciful banter. It Is so little 
Impossible that we have seen it all actually happen 
before our eyes within a few months in Russia; and 
what has happened in Russia is so little exceptional 
or extraordinary that it is in lesser or greater degree 
the invariable rule of every revolution. All the 
bright hopes of past efforts at a really new order 
have been wrecked upon this one rock: human lust 
for the coercion of those of contrary opinion; the 
complete lack of faith in freedom as a method of 
human intercourse. Mankind has failed in these 
efforts because men do not yet love freedom ; do not 
believe in it, do not understand Its need, or the 
grounds upon which it is necessary to preserve it. 



[235] 



CHAPTER II 

THE HERD AND ITS HATRED OF FREEDOM 

The deep-seated hatred of those who have the insufferable 
impudence to disagree with us is one of the strongest and 
most constant motives in history often ruthlessly over-riding 
economic and other considerations, yet seldom taken into 
account. The motive has strong biological justification, but 
like other instincts of self-preservation may destroy us if 
yielded to indiscriminately without foresight of consequences. 
How the social machinery of modern societ)?^ tends to develop 
this herd feeling. Two essays for war time : " The Prob- 
lem of Northcliffe " ; " De Haeretico Comburiendo, or ' Now 
Is Not the Time.' " 

Although an almost universal discredit has 
fallen, both upon the over-intellectualization of mo- 
tive in the explanation of conduct, and upon " util- 
ity " as its basis, we still find a curious disinclination 
to give any considerable place to psychological and 
temperamental motives as factors m the shaping 
of human society. Thus, although, as already 
noted, it becomes more and more evident that we 
must accept as one of the predominant factors of 
history a real hatred of those who have the insuf- 
ferable impudence to disagree with us (the Incred- 
ible horrors of religious persecution, the massacres, 
wars, inquisitions, are Inexplicable unless we give a 

[236] 



large place to this fact In human nature) , we find our 
historians attempting to explain the religious wars 
and the history of such institutions as the inquisition 
in economic or " realist " terms — as though any- 
thing could be more " real " than the satisfaction of 
a great fundamental instinct, an instinct as deep- 
seated almost as the instincts of sex or hunger. 

So at the present moment, the feeling of most 
Americans probably is that there can be no real 
danger of tyranny or oppression in American policy, 
foreign or domestic, because there is no " selfish in- 
terest " involved: the country is asking nothing from 
Germany and in the suppression of anti-war or anti- 
national expressions is demanding only conformity 
to a cause which is as noble as ever inspired a great 
people. 

The religious persecutions, so far as the mass of 
the people were concerned, were entirely disinterested 
and unselfish. The intense popular feeling which 
demanded the suppression of heresy derived from 
no " economic " Interest. That feeling was in large 
measure the conviction that in maintaining true reli- 
gion the persecutors were maintaining morality and 
good conduct, the welfare of society in this world as 
well as the salvation of their children in the next. 
The laws and Institutions which become the most 
serious menace to rriankind are precisely those that 
can appeal to much that is good. Institutions which 
can appeal only to evil could never become powerful 
enough to become a menace.^ 

1 Nothing seems to make us so wicked as a conviction of right- 
eousness based on passionate intuition. Lea's " History of the In- 

[237] 



That indeed is the danger of the herd instinct 
itself — the fact that in a measure it is essential to 
any society. Without a certain unity of feeling 
paving the way to unity of action, there can be no 
workable social order. In the crowded traffic of 
the modern city we must all go to the right or all 
go to the left. It does not matter much which it is, 
so long as we all do the same thing. For some to 
insist on going to the left while the others go to 
the right, is to endanger all, and the majority have 
the right to insist upon conformity to the common 
rule. The strong instinct to exact unified conduct 
even at the cost of coercion, may well have its re- 
mote origins in the flock, the herd, the bee hive, 
where the very existence of the community, as a com- 
munity, depended upon a common policy commonly 
observed. 

The motive may well be protective, biologically. 
Yet, like other instincts of self-preservation, or which 
have great survival value, it may destroy us as well 
as protect us if yielded to indiscriminately without 
foresight of consequences. It Is a self-protective in- 
stinct which prompts us to rush out of a theatre when 
some one shouts that it is on fire. If five thousand 

quisition " (Vol. I, p. 228) tells us that under the law of the medi- 
aeval church: "The son must denounce the father and the husband 
was guilty if he did not deliver his wife to a frightful death. . . . 
No pledge was to remain unbroken. It was an old rule that faith 
was not to be kept with heretics. As Innocent III emphatically 
phrased it, ' according to the canons faith is not to be kept with him 
who keeps not faith with God.' No oath of secrecy, therefore, was 
binding in a matter of heresy, for if one is faithful to a heretic, he 
is unfaithful to God." 

Transpose God into Patriotism, or Fatherland, and you have the 
moral basis of modern Prussianism. 

[238] 



people yield to that instinct without discipline and 
without moral self-control, their action may result, 
not in protection, but distaster. Their safety depends 
upon not obeying their instinct, upon it repression, 
upon self discipline, based on rationalized experi- 
ence. 

What the uncontrolled instinct of the herd has 
done to human society in the past such incidents as 
the religious persecutions, and the influence of re- 
ligious institutions upon the political and social or- 
ganization of Europe during some centuries, suffi- 
ciently tells. We have a feeling that never again 
could such things be duplicated. But history — par- 
ticularly the history of the last four years — gives 
not the slightest justification for any such hope. We 
may well transfer our errors from the religious to 
the political field; but they may well be as mischiev- 
ous in the one as in the other. 

It is a fatuous and dangerous optimism which 
would see in the characteristic machinery of indus- 
trial society — our popular press, our rapid means of 
communication, our mechanical efficiency — any pro- 
tection against the tyrannies which have cursed men 
in the past. These mechanisms may well become 
instruments for the satisfaction of these widespread 
passions in a fashion which the two essays that fol- 
low attempt to indicate. They are here reproduced 
as pertinent to our present problem. The first is a 
consideration of the modern press as a social and 
political force. 

[239] 



I 

" THE PROBLEM OF NORTHCLIFFE " 

Let an American imagine that New York is not 
only the largest city in the Union, but that it is also 
the seat of the national government; and that the 
government has absorbed to itself most of the func- 
tions now exercised by the governments of the states, 
so that state politics have ceased to have any real in- 
terest or importance, even in the states themselves. 
Let him imagine further that participation in the poli- 
cies of this centralized government is a mark of social 
distinction, so that politics are largely in the hands 
of the socially prominent, and the city is also the 
country's artistic and literary centre — in short, the 
only capital that counts. Let him imagine further 
that this centralized government holds office, not 
for fixed periods, but at the pleasure of a legisla- 
ture split into five or six distinct groups; that the 
legislature itself is not elected immovably for fixed 
periods but may by the fortunes of politics find itself 
confronted at any moment by a general election, or 
by a by-election which may affect party fortunes; 
may, in other words, find itself at the mercy of the 
popular feeling of the moment. 

Then let the American's already overtaxed im- 
agination conceive that New York can be reached 
from the remotest corner of the Union in a few 

[240] 



hours, so that newspapers of the capital can ap- 
pear almost simultaneously in Boston, Washington, 
Baltimore, New Orleans, Chicago, St. Louis, Cin- 
cinnati, Pittsburgh, Denver, Omaha, Los Angeles, 
and San Francisco — which cities, having no state 
or local politics that matter, would be mainly in- 
terested in those of New York. Then let him im- 
agine that of these New York papers, the Times, the 
World, the Tribune, the American and Journal, to- 
gether with a score of weeklies like Collier's or the 
Saturday Evening Post, domestic publications like 
The Ladies' Home Journal and a few monthly maga- 
zines, amounting to some sixty pubHcations, were all, 
together with forest and paper mills for their manu- 
facture, owned by one large trust, so entrenched by 
Its vast capital resources and its facilities for 
economical and reciprocal publicity as to be able in- 
stantly to steam-roller any real competition; and, 
finally, that the controlling shareholder of this trust 
is also its active head, a man combining unusual ad- 
ministrative capacity and relentless energy with an 
incomparable genius for the understanding of the 
popular state of mind. The American who can in 
imagination grasp all those various factors will un- 
derstand something of the influence exercised by Al- 
fred Harmsworth, first Baron Northcliffe,^ In Eng- 
lish opinion and politics. 

I have, of course, for purposes of clarity exag- 
gerated somewhat the contrast of conditions. It 
is obvious, for Instance, that Manchester and Edln- 

1 Written in 1916. Lord Northcliffe is now a Viscount. 
[241] 



burgh are in some degree centres of intellectual 
and political life offsetting the influence of London. 
But the general truth of the contrast remains. The 
problem of Northcliffe is the problem of capitalistic 
industry with its tendency to centralization and com- 
bination applied to newspaper production. I have 
put the case in this way because the American who 
thinks of it in terms of existing American conditions 
will not realize its gravity in England. The condi- 
tions I have just described are found in any other 
great country to a lesser degree, but in England they 
are very acute. Yet the decisions which they will 
affect do not concern England alone ; for the political 
decisions of England, by reason of her historical, geo- 
graphical, and economical circumstances, affect the 
whole world. They will necessarily determine in 
large part the course of the Allied Powers during 
the next few years, and so the character of western 
civilization for, it may be, generations. If, as some- 
one has said, " no man nor government can hold of- 
fice, nor policy succeed in England save by the grace 
of Lord Northcliffe," can that Individual determine 
by his personal will the future of western civilization? 
The question receives commonly two answers in 
England; both, in my view, dangerously false and 
misleading. The first is to the effect — and this 
was until a year or two since the almost universal 
one — that the influence of the Northcliffe press is 
far more apparent than real. That what it does is 
intelligently to anticipate what in any case will take 
place — the German war, conscription, or what not 
— advocate it, and then appropriate the credit for 

[242] 



having brought It about; that as its Influence depends 
upon faithfully reflecting public opinion it cannot 
lead or control it; that, like a barometer, it registers 
the weather and has no part in determining it. The 
opposed school is typified by those whose one sug- 
gestion for the maintenance or making of peace, for 
the success of a league of nations, for the improve- 
ment of relations with America or what not is " the 
conversion of Northcliffe." If NorthcUffe would but 
will it, the aspirations of mankind throughout the 
ages would at last be realized. English reformers 
and friends of peace have on many occasions plain- 
tively urged this upon the present writer. 

As to the first of these views — that Lord North- 
cliffe's influence does not really count — it is voiced 
most energetically perhaps by those whose beliefs 
on concrete political and public affairs have been 
most largely — though unconsciously — determined 
by just the forces they belittle. I have known an 
English householder talk most contemptuously of 
" this Harmsworth fellow and his half-penny sen- 
sations " and become Indignant at the notion that 
he could be Influenced In his opinions thereby; and 
yet reveal, on cross-examination, that practically 
every piece of printed matter that came Into his 
home (and was ever read) came from just that 
despised source. " But I don't take my opinions 
from the papers; I never read their leading articles." 
I led him on to expressions of opinion concerning 
the government of the day. Its merits and demerits, 
his estimate of the persons that compose It, of the 
character of other nations, his notions of fiscal policy, 

[243] 



of national education, of the country's past and fu- 
ture foreign policy, and so on. Every opinion he 
expressed responded accurately to just that distribu- 
tion of emphasis in the news of our time which marks 
the Northcliffe press. Given the facts as this house- 
holder conceived them, he could come to no other 
opinion ; and those facts — one group of them 
stressed day after day and another group intrinsically 
as important quietly hidden away in corners — were 
presented as Lord Northcliffe had decreed they 
should be presented. I tested my householder as to 
his knowledge of some essentials. Did he know 
of such and such action by such and such foreign 
government? Of such and such statement in Par- 
liament? Of the result of such and such official in- 
quiry? He did not; it was not intended that he 
should. His estimate of such and such a public man 
was formed of headline or paragraph summaries 
made by hostile journalists of parliamentary 
speeches. My householder's vague impression that 
a certain pubhc man had a great future was due in 
reality to hearing the women of the family talk so 
much about him : and that was due to the frequency 
with which pictures of the said public man's babies, 
held lovingly by their saintly mother, appeared In 
The Weekly Home Comforter or some other publi- 
cation which combines the overt distribution of paper 
patterns with successfully concealed promotion of 
certain political causes. 

Obviously what England thinks is largely con- 
trolled by one man; not by the direct expression 
of any opinion of his own but by controlling the 

[244] 



distribution of emphasis In the telling of facts, so 
stressing one group of them day after day and keep- 
ing another group in the baclcground as to make a 
given conclusion inevitable. And this, it will be said, 
justifies those who maintain that Northcliffe does in 
fact control the mind and opinion of his nation, and 
that he can by that means direct its policies and des- 
tiny. 

Well, dangerous as that personal power un- 
doubtedly in certain circumstances may be, I do 
not believe that It is by any means the most danger- 
ous element In those English conditions J have de- 
scribed. For there are very definite limits to it; 
and it is precisely In the nature of those limits that 
we shall find a hint of a far greater danger. 

Let us see first just how the power of a news- 
paper corporation is limited, in, say the matter of 
peace and war. Assume, for the sake of illustration, 
that the growth of militarism in Germany, of the 
party of aggression, during the last ten or fifteen 
years would have been checked, and liberal and in- 
ternationalist tendencies developed In that country 
if England had devised an acceptable plan by which 
Germany had been guaranteed real equality of 
economic opportunity in the undeveloped areas of 
the world — In Egypt, Morocco, and the rest of 
Africa — and a real economic right of way through 
to the Near East. Suppose this plan to be so far- 
reaching that it would be patent to the German peo- 
ple as a whole that they were in no way encircled, 
or menaced in their economic Interest, or excluded 
from opportunities equal to those of other great 

[245], 



peoples. Let us assume that England had been pre- 
pared to Internationalize her own imperially gov- 
erned territory and to use her influence with France 
to secure the application of a similar policy in French 
Africa. 

Now, if the head of a great newspaper combina- 
tion had believed that along some such lines as these 
peace and the gradual liberalization of German pol- 
icy would have been secured, could he have used 
his power for the promotion of that policy? To 
ask of the English people some surrender of sover- 
eignty in their imperially governed territories — 
which would have been necessary to make such a 
policy successful — would have run counter to 
firmly established notions of national right and 
dignity; it would have made many Englishmen un- 
comfortable and disturbed, and the whole thing 
would have been very easily capable of misrepre- 
sentation. The first thought and natural impulse 
of a proud and imperially-minded people would have 
been all against it, a fact which would certainly not 
have been lost upon the trade rivals of this sup- 
posititious newspaper proprietor. Those rivals — 
if they had been at all technically efficient — would 
have been able to secure a popular reaction to appeals 
to old-established conceptions and prejudices, to im- 
pulse, and passion, long before any large response 
could have been provoked by appeals to second 
thoughts and rationally justified policies. These 
rivals would, moreover, have found capital and ad- 
vertising among the special groups menaced by the 
proposed new policy. Had Lord Northcliffe 

[246] 



adopted such a line fifteen years ago, he would not 
now be Lord Northcllffe. Had his been the sort of 
mind to be attracted to such a policy it would not 
be the sort that is predominantly popular — " the 
common mind to an uncommon degree." If, when 
he first entered journalism — some years before the 
Boer War — he had left to others the task of giv- 
ing expression to all those widespread impulses and 
feelings that lie near the surface of our nature, and 
had exploited rather the much more slowly aroused 
sentiment of rationahty, some other proprietor 
would have entered the neglected field; and the con- 
trol of big circulations — and national destinies — 
would now be in other hands. Where, as between 
two policies, the instinctive motives of conduct are 
pretty evenly balanced, the power of an individual 
in Lord Northcliffe's position is of course decisive. 
But in those situations a small power may be de- 
cisive. 

Where Lord Northcliffe may seem for a time to 
maintain a policy which runs counter to popular 
clamour of the moment — as when the Daily Mail 
was burned in the Stock Exchange because of its 
persistent attacks on Kitchener at the time of the 
shell shortage — it merely means that he knows 
what the public wants better than the public knows. 
He knew that their desire for victory was sufficiently 
near the surface, sufficiently formulated and over- 
whelming, for them to digest anything which he 
could show to be necessary for that purpose. And 
his rivals, in disparaging the line he took, showed 
themselve? (since they too supported the war "to 

[247] 



the bitter end ") his inferiors both in patriotism and 
in real understanding of the popular mind. 

In this matter of the shell shortage particularly, 
as in most of the other campaigns which he has 
conducted, the abuse which has in the past been 
levelled at Northcliffe is as silly and ignorant as the 
disparagement of his influence. It is of the essence 
of his success that his social and political ideals should 
be the common and accepted ones of his time. Un- 
til the war the Northcliffe press had no particular 
politics and was perhaps on the whole the most im- 
partial in England. It admitted, in the form of 
signed articles, an expression of views hostile to 
its own to a degree that the papers who were so 
ready to gird at it could not boast. If, since the 
war. Lord Northcliffe has so selected daily facts 
as to tell in favour of his country's cause and against 
the enemy's; to maintain by hate and anger the 
country's fighting temper; to discredit views which 
might abate that temper, and persons who do not 
share it, he has ample justification in the example 
of the country's government and ordinarily accepted 
standards of patriotism. 

The real problem of Northcliffe is not in a person 
but in social, psychological, and industrial conditions. 
If it had not been Northcliffe, it would have been 
some one else whose personality would have swayed 
within the range of the limits I have indicated, the 
national action of his time. The fact which ought 
to disquiet us is the nature of those limits. They 
reveal — as in the instance I have chosen — the 
operation of a psychological Gresham law. Just as 

[248] 



in commerce debased coin, If there be enough of it, 
must drive out the sterling, so in the contest of mo- 
tives, action which responds to the more primitive 
feelings and impulses, first thoughts, established 
prejudice, can be stimulated by the modern news- 
paper far more easily than action which is prompted 
by rationalized second thought. Any newspaper ap- 
pealing to the former group of motives must " get 
away with it " long before that which appeals to 
the second can establish its case. And this premium 
upon the more dangerous type of action, modern 
conditions of industry and finance tend to increase. 

When Swift wrote his pamphlet " The Conduct 
of the Allies " he presented a point of view con- 
trary to the accepted one and profoundly affected 
his country's opinion and policy. Yet at most he 
circulated ten thousand copies. It was printed, I 
believe, at his own expense. Any printer in a back 
street could have furnished all the material capital 
necessary for reaching effectively the whole reading 
public of the nation. Today, for an unfamiliar 
opinion to gain headway as against accepted opinion, 
the mere mechanical equipment of propaganda would 
be beyond the resources of any ordinary individual. 
A newspaper — the only effective medium for pam- 
phleteering in our day — is an important industrial 
undertaking, demanding grave financial risks which 
the ordinary capitalist will not face unless he is pretty 
sure of popular support. No newspaper can be 
financially successful as against well established rivals 
If it champions unpopular opinions. 

This means In practice the stereotyping of all those 
[249] 



social and political conceptions In which easily 
aroused passion and feeling are involved, those con- 
ceptions rooted, not necessarily in the deepest in- 
stincts, but in the most easily awakened. The net 
result of the process I have sketched is a tempera- 
mental and moral conservatism, a reversion to primi- 
tive instinct, and the sloughing of the more lately 
acquired social qualities. That may seem a strange 
statement when we remember that England has for 
the purposes of the war made overnight changes in 
the direction of state socialism which in time of peace 
half a century of agitation could not have produced. 
But the temperamental and moral foundations of 
those policies are not new; they are as old as the 
tribal grouping of mankind — which, you will kindly 
note, does not happen to have sufficed for our social 
needs. The ready submission to authority, the sub- 
mergence of the Individual in the group, an Intense 
gregariousness that will tolerate no Individualism 
of thought or ideal, the determination to secure the 
victory of our group over rival groups, are among 
the Instinctive foundations not only of the ancient 
tribe but of feudalism — and of the modern Ger- 
man state. It is not a mere political accident that the 
introduction of those " revolutionary " measures of 
wartime England have synchronized with the acces- 
sion to power of the most reactionary and conserva- 
tive type of statesman — the Milners, Curzons, Car- 
sons. 

The result of applying the tribal conception to a 
world of closely knit nations Is shown by the pres- 
ent condition of Europe. It needs revision. But 

[250] 



every attempt at revision will encounter somewhere 
the primitive tribal instinct or passion. All revision 
of conception, in any field In the past, has been the 
work of small minorities, of individual minds: a few 
heretics, encyclopedists or pamphleteers able to reach 
other minds for a sufficient length of time to break 
down the first prejudice. But that Influence of the 
individual mind maintaining a heresy, the modern 
press, by virtue of the psychological Gresham law 
acting in the particular economic and Industrial con- 
ditions of our time I have Indicated, tends to destroy. 
If the feudalisms, autocracies, dynasties, and inqui- 
sitions of the past had possessed the modern me- 
chanical press operating In closely packed populations 
whose Industrial occupations demanded most of their 
mental energy, that control of the mind by which 
alone the old tyrannies were made possible (a tiny 
governing minority did not impose Its will upon the 
vast majority by virtue of superior physical force) 
would have been maintained for all time. The 
modern press Is likely to make our conceptions of 
the state, nationalism, individual right, International 
obligation and institutions that depend thereon all 
but impossible of reform. 

The forces I am Indicating are not merely con- 
cerned with the mechanical control of Ideas. They 
determine the national temperament. The constant 
stimulus to passion and the herd instinct which the 
necessity of finding an appeal that shall be wider 
and more successful than that of a rival newspaper 
concern, the consequent violent-mlndedness of the 
public, the Impossibility for an unpopular view to 

[251] 



obtain adequate expression, all end by destroying 
the capacity of weighing a contrary opinion by which 
alone thought on public issues is possible. The 
process by which the governmental changes of the 
last two years have been brought about in England 
can only be described as moral lynchings. In 19 15 
the public man who criticized Sir Edward Grey could 
count upon being driven from public life; in 19 16 
those who supported him were so driven. The pa- 
triot of January becomes the pro-German of June. 
Diametrically contrary opinions are advocated within 
six months of one another with the same violence, 
and the short-memoried public, impulsive, unreflec- 
tive, follows the hue and cry in both cases. The 
conditions of the past which produced a political 
Englishman who was impervious to public clamour, 
stubborn in the maintenance of his individual opin- 
ion, yet tolerant of opposed views, have disappeared. 
Every one now seems to go in positive terror of the 
" lynch press." I heard only the other day of a 
highly placed officer who was withdrawn the day his 
command went Into Important action because the au- 
thorities feared that his German-sounding name 
would provoke attack by the " anti-Hun " papers if 
the operation failed 1 The effect of his sudden with- 
drawal was gross confusion and muddle. 

At the present moment In England an observer 
finds this extraordinary situation: the private ex- 
pression on almost every hand of opinions that find 
no public expression whatever. Thus " pubhc 
opinion " does not reflect real opinion. I have be- 
fore me as I write letters from English public men 

[252] 



lamenting the unwisdom of England's attitude to- 
wards America and Mr. Wilson's policy of the last 
few months.^ " But we must wait until public opin- 
ion is more favourable before taking any step." 
Yet if all were to speak their private opinion the pub- 
lic opinion of which they complain would be a vastly 
different thing. The failure to make this needed 
moral contribution to the collective mind causes that 
mind to be shaped by its worst elements. Those 
who shirk their civic duty cannot complain if they, 
too, finally are the victims of the lynch temper which 
they have done nothing to check. 

It is true that in the terms of the problem, as I 
have stated it, the expression of momentarily un- 
popular opinion would be made at great disadvan- 
tage; but the balance would turn in favour of sanity 
if all did their civic duty in this respect. " The ul- 
timate foundation of every state," says Seeley, " is 
a way of thinking." And though I am offering no 
solution to this problem, it is certain that any solu- 
tion must include this moral contribution of each 
man's unpopular opinion. If that is shirked, the 
way of thinking upon which In the last resort we 
must depend will be a disastrous way. 

II 

DE H^RETICO COMBURENDO : OR, " THIS IS NOT 
THE TIME " 

A recent reference by a modern heretic to " the 
famous and amiable" Statute 2, Hen. IV, Cap. 15, 

iJt will be remembered that in 1916 much of the English press 
was hostile to Mr. Wilson, and to his proposed League of Nations. 

[253] 



brought rather vividly to my mind two facts in con- 
nection with it: the excellence of its intention and 
the obvious ineffectiveness of its methods compared 
with those now employed against the particular her- 
etics of our age. 

For, of course, the conception that underlay the 
old statute, as Mr. G. M. Trevelyan has pointed out, 
was that unless every one was compelled to believe 
the prevailing religious doctrine of the particular 
community in which he lived, or, failing his capacity 
to believe it, at least to conceal his thoughts about 
it, the underpinning of all morality would be gone, 
there would be no final sanction, men would give free 
rein to their passions, society would go to pieces, and 
humanity be dissolved into the animal chaos from 
which it had arisen. And so the representatives of 
law and order under the powers granted them by 
the Defence of the Realm and Society Act of their 
time took poor William Sawtrey (the first victim 
of Statute 2, Hen. IV, Cap. 15) and carefully grilled 
him alive over the hot coals and kept him sizzling 
till the market-place, crowded with those who had 
come to see the spectacle, smelt like a busy restaur- 
ant on a hot day; and all because he did aver " that 
after consecration by the priest there remaineth true 
bread." 

Now, whether the safety of society or of the realm 
was threatened by Sawtrey's heresy or not, the meas- 
ure taken to protect them from the danger thereof 
was so ineffectual that In a generation or two the 
great ones of our land had come to think exactly as 
William Sawtrey had thought and were busy burn- 

[254] 



ing other Sawtreys for refusing to afErm the very 
thing which the earher Sawtrey had lost his Hfe de- 
fending. And the result of the successive burnings 
was not to impress mankind with the importance of 
the point for which the rival heretics were burned, 
but to render them on the whole indifferent to both 
points and to convince them that neither had very 
much to do with real religion. 

We, under our new statutes, have transferred our 
heresy hunting to another field, and have greatly 
improved on the ineffective methods of an earlier 
time. 

You may now have what opinion you like upon re- 
ligion, and no man shall hamper the freedom of its 
expression by the written or spoken word, but in 
certain political matters your case is that of Sawtrey 
in another field. You may doubt St. Paul or ques- 
tion the philosophy or the practicability of the 
theories of the Founder of Christianity (we happen 
to be questioning them a good deal). You may 
differ therefrom all you like ; but you shall not differ 
from Sir Edward Grey.^ You may even as a Chris- 
tian Pastor criticize the Testament but you must not 
criticize the White Book. If you treat the Secre- 
tary of State for Foreign Affairs as critically as you 
do the Founder of Christianity and subject the For- 
eign Office dispatches to as rigid an analysis as Mr. 
J. M. Robertson has subjected the Bible, you will, 
if you are a pastor, lose your pastorate (two cases 

* This was written in 1914 when it was fatal for a public man to 
criticize Sir Edward Grey. Later the Northcliffe Press made it 
fatal to support him. 

[255] 



have come to my personal knowledge), If a grocer, 
your trade ; if a newspaper, your circulation and your 
advertising. 

And these " sanctions " are so much more effec- 
tive than the burning alive. " Human nature, being 
what it is " (and being so very different from what 
those who appeal most frequently to it would have 
us believe), a man would so much rather lose his 
life than his livelihood; so much rather be burned 
alive for his opinions than held in contempt by old 
friends for them; finds it so much easier to make 
one momentary and dramatic sacrifice than to go 
on making day by day the small unnoticed sacri- 
fices: the pressure of debt and the reproaches of 
family or business associates. The matter does not 
admit of any doubt or discussion. Every single day 
since August has furnished numberless proofs 
of this fact in human nature. The soldiers who 
make up, say, the German army are not morally 
superior men; they are, of course, morally very in- 
ferior to the troops of the AUIes (even, of course, 
to Senegalese Negroes, Turcos, , or Cossacks) ; in 
their civil lives they show presumably all the usual 
servility of the German civilian; shape their opin- 
ions carefully to the needs of their careers as petty 
bureaucrats or employes; show themselves generally 
capable of all the small meannesses that character- 
ize that unpleasant animal. Yet by the testimony 
of their enemies they die without flinching; In hordes, 
in sickening waves ("the thousands that our guns 
tore to ribbons did not check in the slightest degree 
the onrush of the men behind," reads one tvpical 

[256] 



account) . And the demi-gods of the valiant French 
army are, when at home, the men we read about in 
the pages of Courteline, Lavedan, or Zola. When 
armies embrace the whole manhood of a nation they 
are necessarily composed of the "average man"; 
and though, as we have seen, the average man can 
go to his death with a laugh, the same man will sell 
his conscience for an extra pound a week. If Jones 
the floor walker or Smith the partner of the East- 
hampton Emporium is called upon by public procla- 
mation of the Courts to make public recantation of his 
political creed or be shot, and the whole town waits 
in dramatic expectation for his decision, without any 
sort of doubt either Smith or Jones would elect to be 
shot and would go to his death without a tremor. 
But if Jones gets a hint that his political disagree- 
ment with an important customer has lost custom 
to the firm and is notified that he must not mix 
politics with his business; if Smith the partner is 
shown that his presidency of the local Peace Society 
is making the firm unpopular with the retired colonels 
who constitute its chief clientele ; and Smith's partner 
— who does not share Smith's views — puts it to 
Smith, whether one partner has any right to ruin 
the other on behalf of the first's political opinions 
(which are not shared by the second) ; if Robin- 
son the manager of the local paper is told that he 
had no right to take the shareholders' money if he 
intended to make their property valueless by the 
advocacy of unpopular views; why, then the men 
who in the other circumstances would so readily have 
died are likely to waver. They are not quite sure 

[257] 



what IS right; they would sacrifice themselves — 
have they a right to sacrifice others? And so they 
keep their views to themselves. I put the matter 
at its best, assuming that motives of simple venality 
do not operate. The process may even act more 
impersonally still. Robinson's shareholders may 
have no knowledge even of the politics of his paper; 
the shares may be held by maiden ladies or lawyers 
or trustees to whom they are just sources of dividend. 
The falling off in revenue is simply taken as proof of 
incompetence; Robinson is succeeded by a manager 
determined that no unpopular politics shall interfere 
with circulation or advertising. A heretic has been 
suppressed — the weight taken from one side of the 
scale of opinion and put Into the other — simply by 
impersonal " social forces," a kind of force much 
more effective really as a corrective of heresy than 
the pressure of the thumbscrew. 

Thus does a prejudice once started gain mo- 
mentum. It is not checked by the spectacle of any 
moving or human valour in the defence of contrary 
opinion; it eliminates without knowing all real ex- 
pression of the other side. The public cannot choose 
between two courses because it has become impossi- 
ble for two courses to be presented to it; it no longer 
uses its mind and weighs reasons pro and con, mak- 
ing a free choice; it is carried along a current of its 
own creation, as much a beast of instinct as a band 
of stampeded cattle, each of which is rushing in a 
given direction — perhaps to destruction — merely 
because the others are. 

The present writer happens to be in favour of 
[258] 



prosecuting the war; to have been all his thinking 
life a profoundly convinced anti-Prussian; to take 
the view that English influence and government is 
very much better than Prussian influence and govern- 
ment; to believe that in July last Sir Edward Grey 
did his very utmost to avert war; that the enemy 
should be defeated and Prussian militarism destroyed 
— and just as profoundly that none of these things 
will avail much if the new statute De Hseretico Com- 
burendo, which the nation has imposed upon itself, 
continues effectively to stop any real discussion of 
the difficult questions which will arise as part of the 
problem of defeating the Prussian and rendering 
the English ideal of hfe and politics triumphant as 
against the Prussian ideal. 

The self-imposed statute is doing two things ; first, 
rendering us incapable of developing a public opinion 
which shall know what it wants at the peace, and 
how it proposes to get it; second, It is nullifying the 
moral object of the war by destroying In England 
the Ideal it set out to protect and creating in England 
the ideal it set out to destroy. 

We started upon the war fully persuaded that Its 
object was to put an end to militarism In Europe, to 
build up a system of European governments based 
upon the co-operation of the governed, to establish a 
society of nations rooted in real law. Any one who 
cares to watch the development of opinion during 
six months will see that day by day this Ideal has 
been steadily undermined; writers and public men 
who first advocated It we now find expressing the 
purest Prusslanism ; we find English scientists adopt- 

[259] 



ing without protest the view that peace is not merely 
a dream, but an evil dream — a view which when 
expressed by Germans we take as demonstration of 
the need of destroying them. We shall not stand 
for a better society at the peace for the simple rea- 
son that we have gradually undermined our " Will 
to Peace"; we have persuaded ourselves of its im- 
possibility, and we shall consequently make no effort 
to establish it. 

The cause for this change of spirit is not far to 
seek. Shortly after the war began we laid It down 
that " this was not the time " to discuss peace. 
There was to be a truce. But the " truce " meant 
that the pacifist should be silent and the militarist 
should go on urging his view; there was no truce 
on the part of the Horatio Bottomleys, the Maxses, 
the Blatchfords. They were continuing to indoctrin- 
ate the public as lustily as ever. The truce meant 
that no one should be allowed to reply to them. A 
curious instance happened to come to my knowledge. 
A Liberal having proclaimed to the extent of two 
columns in a Liberal paper of a heretofore pacifist 
type that war was in the nature of things and in- 
evitable, a friend of mine wrote an article in reply 
thereto. He promptly received a note from the ed- 
itor to the effect that though he agreed with the 
tenor of the second article he did not think that " this 
was the time to discuss the ethics of war." (Pre- 
sumably a long article urging that war was inevitable, 
and In the nature of man, was not by way of discus- 
sion of the ethics of war.) And so for six months, 

[260] 



day by day, in Liberal and reactionary papers alike 
the public has heard one side only. 

No one, not even men of strong intellect thor- 
oughly well grounded in the contrary views, can day 
by day be exposed to this process without being un- 
consciously led to forget many things which he would 
not forget if occasionally reminded by impartial dis- 
cussion. And what is true of our general attitude 
towards peace as a whole is true of the more de- 
tailed problems of the settlement. We all know 
perfectly well that there are very difficult questions 
that will demand much discussion and will commit 
us one way or another to far-reaching principles 
greatly affecting our future policies. 

In the end our destinies in these matters will be 
settled by a dozen diplomats acting in secret; the 
future of millions, the issues of civilization for a 
generation or two, will be settled over the heads 
of those concerned as much as though they were 
cattle upon a farm. Or by a wave of popular 
feeling, provoked fortuitously by some momenta- 
rily dramatic Incident. In neither case are the peo- 
ples masters of their fate; In both self-government 
is reduced to a sham. 

Under the old statute lay the view that the common 
people, because of their lack of understanding, should 
not concern themselves with theology ; under the new 
statute the common people must not concern them- 
selves with their politics. And yet the common and 
" unlnstructed " man of today has saner and clearer 
and truer notions concerning his theology than had 

[261] 



the typically learned theologian of the older time, 
and far more of true religious feeling. 

The old assumption was that you could not believe 
your religion if you discussed it, nor be loyal to your 
church if you took any step to protect it from error. 
The new assumption is that you cannot believe in your 
country's cause if you discuss it, nor protect your 
State if you attempt to understand its policy. We 
are told if we run the foreign affairs of our country 
as we run its other affairs normally, by public discus- 
sion, we shall make an end to the success which has 
marked the secret management of foreign affairs 
by experts in the past. Well, if the outcome that we 
are now witnessing, is the efficiency that marks se- 
crecy and the expert, there are some of us who feel 
half disposed to risk the inefficiency of the common 
man. In any case, even if the management of for- 
eign affairs by the methods of our home politics does 
produce the same result as at present, we shall at 
least go to the slaughter with our eyes open and 
having had some part in choosing our fate. As it 
is we have had no choice. It may be the " efficient " 
way; but it does not happen to leave us free men. 



[262] 



CHAPTER III 

WHY FREEDOM MATTERS 

Our age long failures to grasp the real justification of 
freedom: Society's need. The self-same debate in Athens 
two thousand five hundred years ago. The oppressions from 
which the mass have suffered have always been imposed by 
themselves. The idea that a tiny minority, by means of 
physical force, can impose tyranny upon the mass, is ob- 
viously an illusion. That tyranny must be imposed by cap- 
turing the mind of the mass. The quality of any Society 
depends upon the ideas of the individuals who compose it, 
and those ideas upon Freedom and independence of judg- 
ment. The Political Heretic as the Saviour of Society. 

The strength of this Instinctive hatred of heresy 
seems to stand permanently in the way of our realiza- 
tion of those facts connected with the working of the 
human inteUigence which make freedom of discussion 
a social need. It Is twenty-five hundred years since 
Socrates based the defence of free discussion upon 
its real ground In terms that are as true and vital, — 
and as Ignored — today as they were In his day. 

In the press discussions of this matter both here 
and In Europe the problem Is envisaged mainly as 
one of minority right. Protest against repression, 
so far as It Is made at all, Is made on behalf of the 
" right " to free speech. The Implication is that the 

[263] 



State should be prepared to take some risk in order 
to preserve a freedom so hardly won. 

Such a claim places the matter upon a wholly mis- 
leading and unsound foundation. If it were true that 
respect for freedom of speech could invoke no greater 
reason than the right of individuals to enjoy intel- 
lectual exercise unhampered by the needs of the com- 
munity for common action, such a right should not 
survive a state of war for a single day. But the real 
reason for preserving minority criticism is the need 
for it on the part of the community — of the major- 
ity — as much in war time as in peace. Indeed the 
need is greater in war time. For without minority 
criticism the majority is bound, sooner or later, to 
go wrong, to show defective judgment, to adopt and 
execute disastrous policies; and that even more cer- 
tainly in war than in peace. 

And it is a significant reflection upon the extent of 
any real understanding of the principle of democracy 
that this one reason, recognized by every mind from 
Socrates to Milton, and from Milton to Mill and 
Mill to Bertrand Russell, or John Dewey, that has 
wrestled with the problem of freedom as overriding 
all others in importance, is the reason practically 
never invoked by either party to the popular discus- 
sion. The matter is almost always regarded as a 
conflict of rights between the majority and the mi- 
nority, or as between the individual and society. At 
best we "tolerate" contrary opinion — the very 
word excluding the idea that such is necessary to the 
common welfare, and should be scrupulously pre- 
served to that end. 

[264] 



If we could imagine a modern heretic — a Bernard 
Shaw or a Bertrand Russell — put on trial for his 
heresies, would he not (especially Shaw) state his 
defence in just about the terms that Socrates made 
his: 

" I do beg of you not to interrupt me, but hear me ; there 
was an understanding between us that you should hear me 
to the end. I have something. to say, at which you may be 
inclined to cry out ; but I believe that to hear me will be good 
for you, and therefore I beg that you will not cry out. I 
would have you know that if you kill such an one as I am, 
you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me. 

" I am not going to argue for my own sake, as you may 
think, but for yours, that you may not sin against God by 
condemning me, who am his gift to you. For if you kill me 
you will not easily find a successor to me, who, if I may use 
such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given 
to the state by God; and the state is a great and noble 
steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and 
requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God 
has attached to the state, and all day and in all places am 
always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and re- 
proaching you. You will not easily find another like me, 
and therefore I would advise you to spare me. I dare say 
that you may feel out of temper (like a person who is sud- 
denly awakened from sleep), and you think that you might 
easily strike me dead as Anytus advises, and then you would 
sleep on for the remainder of your lives; unless God in his 
care of you sent you another gadfly." 

And Socrates tells us of the impossibility of an 
honest independence of mind in the public life of the 
Athenian democracy: 

" Some one may wonder why I go about in private giving 
advice and busying myself with the concerns of others, but 

[265] 



do not venture to come forward In public and advise the 
state. I will tell you why. I am certain, O men of Athens, 
that if I had engaged in politics, I should have perished long 
ago, and done no good either to you or to myself. And do 
not be offended at my telling you the truth : for the truth is, 
that no man who goes to war with you or any other multi- 
tude, honestly striving against the many lawless and unright- 
eous deeds which are done in a state, will save his life ; he 
who will fight for the right, if he would live even for a brief 
space, must have a private station and not a public one." ^ 

Can we write very differently of our time? Are 
we any nearer to understanding what should really 
be done with the heretic, the man of independent 
mind and judgment! Athens proposed to kill that 
particular heretic. What other fate did he deserve? 
Socrates answers : 

" And so He proposes death as the penalty. And what 
shall I propose on my part, O men of Athens? Clearly that 
which is my due. And what is my due? What 
return shall be made to the man who has never had 
the wit to be idle during his whole life; but has been 
careless of what the many care for — wealth, and 
family interests, and military offices, and speaking in the 
assembly, and magistracies, and plots, and parties. Reflect- 
ing that I was really too honest a man to be a politician and 
live, I did not go where I could do no good to you or to 
myself; but where I could do the greatest good privately to 
every one of you, thither I went, and sought to persuade 
every man among you. What shall be done to such an one ? 
Doubtless some good thing, O men of Athens, if he has his 
reward; and the good should be of a kind suitable to him. 
What would be a reward suitable to a poor man who is your 
benefactor, and who desires leisure that he may instruct you ? 

II have taken Jowett's translation word for word. ("The Four 
Socratic Dialogues of Plato.") 

[266] 



There can be no reward so fitting as maintenance in the 
Prytaneum, O men of Athens, a reward which he deserves 
far more than the citizen who has won the prize at Olympia 
in the horse or chariot race, whether the chariots were drawn 
by two horses or by many. For I am in want, and he has 
enough; and he only gives you the appearance of happiness, 
and I give you the reality. And if I am to estimate the 
penalty fairly, I should say that maintenance in the Prytan- 
eum is the just return." 

A very Shavian discourse. Of course Athens killed 
him. And our democracies two thousand years or 
more later have not begun to get his point. 

Usually when we speak of the past struggles of the 
people against tyranny, we have In our minds a pic- 
ture of the great mass held down by the superior 
physical force of the tyrant. But such a picture is, 
of course, quite absurd. For the physical force 
which held down the people was that which they 
themselves supplied. The tyrant had no physical 
force save that which his victims furnished him. In 
this struggle of " People vs. Tyrant," obviously the 
weight of physical force was on the side of the peo- 
ple. This was as true of the slave States of antiquity 
as it is of the modern autocracies. Obviously the 
free minority — the five or ten or fifteen per cent. — 
of Rome or Egypt; or the governing orders of 
Prussia or Russia, did not Impose their will upon the 
remaining ninety-five or eighty-five per cent, by vir- 
tue of superior physical force, the sheer weight of 
numbers, of sinew and muscle. If the tyranny of 
the minority had depended upon its own physical 
power, it could not have lasted a day. .The physical 

[267I 



force which the minority used was the physical force 
of the majority. The people were oppressed by an 
instrument which they themselves furnished. 

In that picture, therefore, which we make of the 
mass of mankind struggling against the " force " of 
tyranny, we must remember that the force against 
which they struggled was not in the last analysis 
physical force at all; they themselves furnished the 
instrument which was used against them. It was 
their own weight from which they desired to be 
liberated. 

Do we realize all that this means? It means that 
tyranny has been imposed, as freedom has been won: 
through the Mind. 

The small minority imposes itself and can only 
impose itself by getting first at the mind of the ma- 
jority — the people — in one form or another : by 
controlling it through keeping knowledge from it, as 
in so much of antiquity, or by controlling the knowl- 
edge itself, as in Germany. It is because the minds 
of the mass have failed them, that they have been 
enslaved. Without that intellectual failure of the 
mass, tyranny could have found no force wherewith 
to impose its burdens. To say that " freedom rests 
upon the sword " is not merely not the whole truth; 
it is very nearly the inversion of the truth, for it 
would be truer to say that if all men had refused to 
fight there could have been no tyranny because 
tyranny could have found no physical instrument. 
Physical force does not act of itself but only as the 
human will behind it may direct, and whether that 
force — the sword — is to be an instrument of sui- 

[268] 



cide or salvation, depends, not upon the sword Itself, 
which, for all our romanticizing is dead metal, but 
upon the human mind that wills its use. 

If that is broadly true, it makes the problem of 
preserving freedom very different from what we cur- 
rently conceive it to be. One hears commonly the 
expression " There is no fear that this, that or the 
other measure — of militarism, state control of opin- 
ion, censorship or what not — will ever be perma- 
nent because the people here have control and they 
will never tolerate it." But tyrannies do not come 
because people have lost the power to resist them; 
they come because they have lost the desire so to do. 
The problem of freedom Is at bottom the problem of 
preserving the desire for freedom; preserving the 
capacity to know what it is even, to " know it when 
we see It." Millions of men of pure German blood 
are opposed to the German system. (The casualty 
lists of the American army reeks with German 
names.) Their environment, upbringing, the ideas 
they have absorbed, have brought them to hate 
the German system. Had they been subject to the 
environment of Prussia — been brought up in their 
fatherland In other words — they would have died 
for it as readily as do their relatives. 

When, as we are just now learning to do, we at- 
tempt to read history, not as the story of the rise and 
fall of Empires and States and Dynasties, but as a 
picture of the lives of the common folk, the anony- 
mous millions, we are astonished how little difference 
all the external changes for which men bled so lav- 
ishly, seemed to make in the lives of those common 

[269] 



folk. For them indeed it was true that the more it 
changed the more it was the same thing. It requires 
a real effort to realize, in our wonder and delight in 
the pictures that have been drawn for us of brilliant 
Asiatic, Roman and Greek civilizations, that they 
were all based upon the slavery of the greater part of 
the populations; that vast masses of human beings 
who lived during those thousands of years were the 
mere chattels of a tiny minority. But when we make 
that effort and take a long view we see history as the 
picture of the never-ending slaughter of one set of 
these human chattels by another set; or, if not thrown 
at one another as groups of human chattels, flying at 
one another as puppets of vague hates, as in the wars 
of religion and in the religious persecutions, or in the 
wars of the nationalities like those of the Balkans: 
one race or tongue blindly throwing itself at a differ- 
ent race or tongue merely because it was different, 
because, as Mr. Bertrand Russell says, like dogs 
"something angers them in each other's smell"; 
and when that welter disappears in some degree in 
the western world, we find it succeeded by all the 
sordid meannesses of the industrial revolution, as in 
our own land. 

A student of Italian peasant life, both in the past 
and in the present, has questioned whether in the four 
thousand years more or less of which we have some 
record of life in the Apennine Hills, the lot of the 
peasant has improved at all; whether "progress" 
and invention and political changes have in fact done 
anything whatsoever, either spiritually or materially, 
for the majority of the population living in those 

[270] 



provinces; whether the goat-herds and shepherds two 
thousand years before Christ — they and the women 
they loved and the children these bore (the few reUcs 
they left enable us to judge with some degree of 
certainty of the character of the life they led) — did 
not live as freely and as fully as the peasants living 
there today. If he had gone to the countries of the 
Old Testament, he might have pushed his comparison 
over even a longer period. He points out that less 
to eat they could hardly have had, for if those today 
had less they would starve; more toil they could 
hardly have had, for those of today toil almost to the 
limit of human endurance. Those of the past were 
not free, but neither are those of today. The servi- 
tude of the ancients did not bear more hardly upon 
them probably, than the economic and military servi- 
tude does upon those of today. The burden of debt, 
taxation, of a military machine that may at any mo- 
ment call for them to sacrifice their lives in some cause 
which they do not understand, or may not approve, 
certainly does not leave them free men. 

And does that apply only to the Italian hills? 
Circumspice ! 

We have struggled during these untold centuries 
for bread and freedom. With this result. That 
the great majority have not yet enough to eat, suffer 
from insufficiency or overwork in one form or an- 
other. And our principles of Government have been 
such that there is not now, in theory at least, and very 
nearly in fact, in all the millions of Europe, one man 
physically able to kill, whose life and conscience be- 
longs to himself. From Archangel to Bagdad, from 

[271] 



Carnarvon to Vladivostok there is not one to whom 
an impersonal entity known as THE STATE may 
not suddenly come and say, " You shall leave your 
wife and children and the tasks to which you have 
devoted your life, immediately, and put yourself 
obediently at my orders. The task which I assign 
to you is to kill certain men; as many as possible, 
whether you think them right or whether you think 
them wrong. Kill; or be killed." 

These millions find themselves as much bereft of 
freedom as were the slaves of antiquity. With this 
difference : The slavery of antiquity, the slavery of 
biblical times for instance, made you a slave to a per- 
son, a human being, to whose ordinary human senti- 
ments you could appeal. But in the modern world 
you may at any moment become the slave of an ab- 
straction, a machine. 

Just think: we may be on the eve of the discovery 
of the secret of the release of atomic energy. Such 
a discovery would multiply overnight the wealth of 
the world very many times. If man knew how to use 
such a discovery he could liberate himself once and 
for ever from poverty and soul destroying toil. But 
the instrument will simply use him: it will kill him 
in ever increasing numbers if our present ideas In 
international relationship, our present attitude in cer- 
tain large human issues continue, if we continue to 
believe that " ordeal by battle " is the right method 
of settling difference between peoples. For the 
atomic bomb will bear about the same relation to the 
present high explosive that a sixteen-inch howitzer 
does to a child's toy pistol. And as, with greatly 

[272] 



Increased mechanical power, the women could per- 
fectly well keep the men and youths fed and clothed 
there is no reason why — given the continued com- 
petition in armaments — such a discovery should not 
result in the whole male population of the world giv- 
ing themselves permanently during periods of peace 
to preparation for slaughter, and during war to the 
accomplishment of slaughter. 

It comes then to this: the mind of man In the 
sphere of social relations has so failed, that a dis- 
covery capable of giving ample wealth to the very 
poorest, of abolishing all poverty and nine-tenths 
of the disease of the world, that could place creation 
definftely In man's power — that discovery would be 
a curse. For there would be a real danger that man 
would use such an Instrument for collective suicide. 
Let the world tomorrow, during this war, discover 
how to control atomic energy, so that both sides could 
drop on the hostile cities, bombs like those described 
for us by Mr. Wells, and the killing would be multi- 
plied by ten. Europe, in sober fact and not rhetori- 
cal figure, would become a waste ; and the fantasy of 
Samuel Butler, In which man is faced by extermina- 
tion by his own machines, would become true, in fact. 
And if today It is not actual extermination which 
faces him, it is a dreadful form of slavery — the 
consecration of his life to fulfilling the bloody behests 
of these soulless, mechanical monsters. Indeed, that 
slavery Is already here. We have all wanted to do 
one thing; we have all done another. No one pre- 
tends that the common people of Europe — not even 
the common people of Germany — wanted war, 

[273] 



wanted to be dragged from their fields and factories 
for what was to be for millions, certain death. But 
though everybody hated this act, everybody com- 
mitted it. Each had to take his place in the great 
machine he could not control ; or it would crush him. 
Nobody could stop it. It was the master. 

Man's outstanding failures are often ascribed to 
his selfishness, his grasping materialism, his lack of 
readiness to give himself to the service of others. 
But those millions of lads throwing their lives away 
with a smile — and they include the German lads, 
too — are not doing it from selfishness. They, at 
least, are not actuated by materialism. Surely, the 
marvellous fact which stands out in all this story of 
man's bloodshed, his submissions, his poverty, is the 
vast unselfishness, the incalculable heroism and sacri- 
fices that it reveals. We find men, generation after 
generation, giving everything that they possess — 
the well-being of their lives, their places as bread- 
winners, as guardians and protectors of their families, 
and family life itself — for causes, the triumph of 
which could not only not benefit them, but which at- 
tached the burdens they bore still more firmly to them. 
It is not from any insufiiciency of the impulse to 
sacrifice that untold generations have fought and died. 
It Is from want of knowing how to combine to rule 
themselves for their common good; from failure 
of the social instinct in the largest sense of the 
term. 

Yet, as we saw, man has made advances at points 
— as in the abandonment of religious persecution. 
What Is the nature of the *' social sense " that has 

[274] 



enabled him to do it, that has given him some capacity 
for self rule? To what do we owe our emergence 
from the Europe of ecclesiastical tyrannies and the 
religious wars, from a condition of society which ex- 
posed its members to the risks of the Inquisition, to 
torture or to popular massacre; in which the heretic, 
the man of unusual theological ideas, was a thing of 
horror supposed to carry with him an intolerable 
bodily odour? The change in feeling in this matter 
is widespread, not confined to just a few thinkers 
on a special subject; it applies to whole populations. 
For the extraordinary thing is not so much that men 
should have given up killing one another on account 
of religious differences, but that they — the great 
number — should have ceased wanting to ; not so 
much that the Inquisition should have disappeared, 
but that the personal odour which attached to the 
heretic should be no longer discernible. 

Lecky has pointed out that the motive which dom- 
inated European politics for centuries, which over- 
weighed all others, which seemed destined to con- 
demn western civilization to never-ending conflict, 
which was perhaps the very greatest difficulty with 
which statesmen had to wrestle, has almost disap- 
peared as a major motive in statecraft. What then 
is the nature of this change of mind, of attitude? 
What has brought it about? 

It is not that the experts in Statecraft are more 
learned or acute in our day concerning this detail of 
Government. The theological and political experts 
who defended the principle that the State should 
properly have authority over men's behefs — were 

[275] 



acuter reasoners and had greater knowledge of most 
aspects of the subject with which they dealt, than have 
those perhaps who deal with it today. (In the same 
way the disappearance from our life of the slavery 
or helotry which marked Roman life, is not due to 
the superiority of the modern to Roman statesmen. 
Roman political literature reveals often a type of 
ruler as able and understanding as ours of the pres- 
ent day — to put it at its very lowest !) 

The Europe of the wars of religion and of the 
Inquisition was not, so far as the few were con- 
cerned, a savage Europe. It was the Europe at one 
point of Montaigne and Shakespeare. Nor was the 
theory upon which the State prosecuted heresy and 
which led one group to fight another an absurd one. 
It was based upon an argument which has never been 
fully answered.^ 

1 Elsewhere I happen to have written: — 

" Civilized Governments have abandoned their claim to dictate 
the belief of their subjects. For very long that was a right tena- 
ciously held, and it was held on grounds for which there was an 
immense deal to be said. It was held that, as belief is an integral 
part of conduct, and that as conduct springs from belief, and the 
purpose of the State is to ensure such conduct as will enable us to 
go about our business in safety, it was obviously the duty of the 
State to protect those beliefs, the abandonment of which seemed to 
undermine the foundation of conduct. I do not believe that this 
case has ever been completely answered. A great many believe it 
today, and there are many sections of the European population 
and immensely powerful bodies that would reassert it if only they 
had the opportunity. Men of profound thought and learning today 
defend it; and personally I have found it very difficult to make a 
clear and simple case for the defence of the principle on which 
every civilized Government in the world is today founded. How 
do you account for this — that a principle which I do not believe 
one man in a million could defend from weighty objections — has 
become the dominating rule of civilized government throughout the 
world? 

" Well, that once universal policy has been abandoned, not be- 
cause all arguments, or even perhaps most of the arguments, which 
led to it have been answered, but because the fundamental one has. 

[276] 



Indeed, we know that the minority who ruled the 
Europe of the religious wars were sometimes as tol- 
erant — and as sceptical — in matters of religious 
opinion, as are the educated of today. 

It was the feeling and attitude, the general public 
opinion, which made the wars of religion (and some- 
times made it impossible for the ruling few to pre- 
vent them) and sanctioned these persecutions, as an 
earlier opinion, which included often the opinion of 
the slaves, sanctioned slavery. 

Nor can we assume that the section of the public 
which made public opinion, was less informed in the 
details of theology than is our own. The modern 
man who is tolerant of hostile religious views, where 
the man of an earlier generation would have been 
intolerant, is certainly not so by virtue of any su- 
perior knowledge of the special issues of theological 
controversy, of the texts. Indeed, expert knowledge 
of these matters today, does not, as a rule, imply 
toleration, or even wisdom. He who is learned in 
the texts is generally intolerant of those who draw 
conclusions from them contrary to his own. 

We may fairly conclude that if the theological ex- 
perts had had the settlement of the troubles which 
arose out of religious differences, and which did in 

. . . The world of religious wars and of the Inquisition was a 
world which had a very definite conception of the relation of au- 
thority to religious belief and to truth ; as that truth could be, and 
should be, protected by force. . . . W^hat broke down this concep- 
tion was a growing realization that authority, force, was irrelevant 
to the issues of truth (a party of heretics triumphed by virtue of 
some physical accident, as that they occupied a mountain region) ; 
that it was ineffective, and that the essence of truth was something 
outside the scope of physical conflict. As the realization of this 
grew, the conflicts declined." — "The Foundation of International 
Polity." (Heineraann.) 

I277] 



fact for a time wreck civilization in much of Europe, 
we should be fighting wars of religion yet; and our 
populations sanctioning religious massacre. 

If we have a vast change in the general Ideas of 
Europe in one particular, in the attitude of men to 
dogma, to the importance which they attach to it, to 
their feeling about it, a change which for good or 
evil Is a vast one in Its consequences, a moral and 
Intellectual revulsion which has swept away one great 
difficulty of human relationship and transformed so- 
ciety, it Is because the mass, the common folk, have 
been led to challenge the premises of the learned, of 
those in authority. By so doing they brought the 
discussion back to principles so broad and fundamen- 
tal that the data became the facts of human life and 
experience — data with which the common man is as 
familiar as the scholar. And that challenge and dis- 
cussion authority always at the first regards as blas- 
phemous and impious, and would prevent if It could. 
And the great event I am here touching upon would 
seem to suggest that it is correct reasoning about the 
daily facts of life and experience that is needed be- 
fore we can hope to apply learning with any advan- 
tage — or even without disaster — to such things as 
the management of society. 

The conclusion that It was not the learning of the 
expert, but common thought upon broad issues, which 
changed our attitude in this matter does not rest upon 
obscure or complex historical data. It may be 
proven by reference to any mind that typifies modern 
feeling. Most moderns for instance, reject such be- 
liefs as that in the eternal damnation of the unor- 

[278] 



thodox or of unbaptlzed infants. Of the present- 
day millions for whom such a behef would be morally 
monstrous, how many have been influenced by elab- 
orate study concerning the validity of this or that 
text? The texts simply do not weigh with them, 
though for centuries they were the only thing that 
counted. The things that do weigh with them are 
profounder and simpler — a sense of justice, com- 
passion — things which would equally have led the 
man of the sixteenth century to question the texts 
and the premises of the Church, if discussion had been 
free. It is because It was not free that the social 
instinct of the mass, the general capacity so to order 
their relations as to make it possible for them to live 
together, became distorted and vitiated. And the 
wars of religion resulted. To correct this vitiation, 
to abolish these disastrous hates and misconceptions, 
elaborate learning was not needed. Indeed, It was 
largely elaborate learning which had occasioned 
them. The judges who burned women alive for 
witch-craft, or inquisitors who sanctioned that pun- 
ishment for heresy, had vast and terrible stores of 
learning. JVhat was needed was that these learned 
folk should question their premises in the light of 
facts of common knowledge. It Is by so doing that 
their errors are patent to the quite unlearned of our 
time. No layman was equipped to pass judgment on 
the historical reasons which might support the credi- 
bility of this or that miracle, on the Intricate argu- 
ments which might justify this or that point of dogma. 
But the layman was as well equipped. Indeed he was 
better equipped than the schoolman, t;o question 

[279] 



whether God would ever torture men everlastingly 
for the expression of honest belief; the observer of 
daily occurrences, to say nothing of the physicist, 
was as able as the theologian to question whether a 
readiness to believe without evidence is a virtue at 
all. And questions of the damnation of infants, 
eternal torment, were settled not by the men equipped 
with historical and ecclesiastical scholarship, but by 
the average man, going back to the broad truths of 
life, to first principles, asking very simple questions, 
the answer to which depended not upon the vahdity 
of texts, but upon correct reasoning concerning facts 
which are accessible to all, upon our general sense of 
life as a whole, and our more elementary intuitions 
of justice and mercy, reasoning and intuitions which 
the learning of the expert often distorts. 

Authority always tries to prevent this questioning 
of its premises by the unlearned. To the bishop it 
seems preposterous and an obvious menace to society 
and good morality that his conclusions in theology 
should be questioned by any bootblack. But experi- 
ence has shown over and over again that the Bishop 
is sure to go wrong unless his conclusions are ques- 
tioned and checked by the bootblack; and that un- 
less the bootblack has the liberty of so doing both 
will fall into the ditch. 

The fact that the bishop or the statesman should 
need correction by the unlearned is not so paradox- 
ical as might at first sight appear. For what is the 
function of those learned and authoritative persons? 
It is to do the best for the bootblack in this world 
and the nQxt. But if the bishop is separated from 

[280] 



his wards by his learning, his intellectual pride in his 
own conclusions, his class interest even, he is no fit 
judge of the needs and conditions of the bootblack. 
And the bootblack himself is no fit judge of his own 
case even, if he has lost the habit of private judg- 
ment. That is why slaves have been generally in 
favour of their own slavery; and have so often 
fought to prolong it. 

Exactly the service which extricated us from the 
intellectual and moral confusion that resulted in such 
catastrophes in the field of religion, is needed in 
the field of politics. From certain learned folk — 
writers, poets, professors (German and other), 
journalists, historians and rulers — the public have 
taken certain ideas touching Patriotism, Nationahsm, 
Imperialism, the nature of our obligation to the 
State and so on, ideas which may be right or wrong, 
but which — we are all agreed, curiously enough — 
will have to be very much changed if men are ever 
to live together in peace and freedom ^ ; just as cer- 

1 Says the Daily Chronicle (October 4, 1916) : 

" Did any one at the meeting of the Congressional Union yester- 
day detect the irony — of course the unintended irony — of Lord 
Bryce's recommendation addressed to a branch of the Christian 
Church that international machinery should be created for the pres- 
ervation of peace among men? It must occur at least to the reader 
of the address that in the Christian Church itself we have had such 
a machinery for some nineteen centuries. Nothing in this war of 
revelations and revolutions has astonished the world more than the 
failure of all forms of internationalism to be international — Chris- 
tianity, Socialism, civilization have all become as distinctively na- 
tional as the several belligerent armies themselves, and in Ger- 
many they fight for the Zeppelins and in England against them. 
Nationalism appears to be the master virtue of the day to which all 
others have to conform. Whether new international treaties and 
understandings will prove to be more successful than Christianity 
in securing for the rational side of man chance and time to develop 
remains to be seen, but it is doubtful." 

[281] 



tain notions concerning the institution of private 
property will have to be changed if the mass of men 
are to live in plenty. 

It is a commonplace of militarist argument that 
so long as men feel as they do about their fatherland, 
about patriotism and nationalism, internationalism 
will be an Impossibility. If that is true — and I 
think it is — peace and freedom and welfare will 
wait until those large issues have been raised in men's 
minds with sufficient vividness to bring about a change 
of idea and so a change of feeling with reference to 
them. 

It is unlikely, to say the least, that the mass of 
Englishmen or Frenchmen will ever be in possession 
of detailed knowledge sufficient to equip them to 
pass judgment on the various rival solutions of the 
complex problems that face us, say, in the Balkans, 
when the settlement of Europe comes. And yet it 
was Immediately out of a problem of Balkan politics 
that the war arose, and future wars may well arise 
out of those same problems if they are settled as 
badly in the future as In the past. 

The situation would Indeed be helpless if the na^ 
ture of human relationships depended upon the peo- 
ple, as a whole, possessing expert knowledge in com- 
plex questions of that kind. But, happily, the Sara- 
jevo murders would never have developed Into a 
war involving twenty-five nations, but for the fact 
that there had been cultivated in Europe suspicions, 
hatreds, insane passions and cupidities, due largely 
to false conceptions of a few simple facts in po- 
litical relationship ; conceptions concerning the neces- 

[282] 



sary rivalry of nations, the idea that what one na- 
tion gets another loses, that States are doomed by a 
fate over which they have no control to struggle 
together for the space and opportunities of a lim- 
ited world. But for the atmosphere that these ideas 
create (as false theological notions once created a 
similar atmosphere between rival religious groups), 
most of these at present difficult and insoluble prob- 
lems of nationality and frontiers and government 
would, as the common saying is, have solved them- 
selves. 

Now the conceptions which feed and inflame these 
passions of rivalry, hostility, fear, hate will be modi- 
fied, if at all, by raising In the mind of the European 
some such simple elementary questions as were raised 
when he began to modify his feeling about the man 
of rival religious belief. The Political Reformation 
in Europe will come by questioning, for Instance, the 
whole philosophy of patriotism, the morality, or 
validity, in terms of human well-being of a principle 
like that of " my country, right or wrong " ; by ques- 
tioning whether a people really benefit by enlarging 
the frontiers of their State; whether " greatness " In 
a nation particularly matters; whether the man of 
the small State is not in all the great human values 
the equal of the man of the great Empire. Whether 
the real problems of life — not alone for the Boers 
or Quebec Frenchmen or the millions of India, but 
for the Europeans as well — are greatly touched by 
the colour of the flag. Whether we have not loyal- 
ties to other things as well as to our State. Whether 
we do not in our demand for national sovereignty 

[283] 



ignore international obligation without which the na- 
tions can have neither security nor freedom. 
Whether we should not refuse to kill or horribly 
mutilate a man merely because we differ from him 
in politics. And with those, if the emergence from 
chattel slavery is to be completed by the emergence 
from wage slavery, must be put similarly fundamen- 
tal questions concerning institutions like that of pri- 
vate property and the relation of social freedom 
thereto; we must ask why, if it is rightly demanded 
of the citizen that his life shall be forfeit to the 
safety of the State, his surplus money and property 
shall not be forfeit to its welfare. 

To very many, these questions will seem a kind 
of blasphemy, and they will regard those who utter 
them as the subjects of a loathsome moral perversion. 
In just that way the orthodox of old regarded the 
heretic and his blasphemies. And yet the solution 
of the difficulties of our time, this problem of learn- 
ing to live together without mutual homicide and 
military slavery, depend upon those blasphemies be- 
ing uttered. Because It is only In some such way that 
the premises of the differences which divide us, the 
realities which underlie them, will receive attention. 
It is not that the Implied answer Is necessarily the 
truth — I am not concerned now for a moment to 
urge that it is — but that until the problem is pushed 
back in our minds to these great yet simple issues, 
the will, temper, general Ideas of Europe on this 
subject will remain unchanged. And If they remain 
unchanged so will its conduct and condition. 

Now I am suggesting here that we are drifting to 
[284] 



a condition of institutions calculated to suppress these 
heresies, to prevent those questions being asked. 
We believe that it is pernicious that they should be 
asked at all, and the power of the State is being used 
for the purpose of preventing It. 

I have attempted to show that our welfare and 
freedom really do depend upon our preserving this 
right of the Individual conscience to the expression 
of Its convictions; this right of the heretic to his 
heresy. The claim has been based not upon any 
conception of abstract "right" — jus, droit, recht 
— but upon utility, our needs of heresy, upon the 
fact that if we do not preserve it it Is not alone the 
Individual heretic who will suffer, but all of us, so- 
ciety. By suppressing the free dissemination of un- 
popular Ideas, we render ourselves Incapable of gov- 
erning ourselves to our own advantage, and we shall 
perpetuate that condition of helplessness and slav- 
ery for the mass which all our history so far has 
shown. 

I have stressed that point because the protagonist 
who attempts thus to place the case for freedom and 
welfare upon its real foundation feels always this 
difficulty: that in the mind of most perhaps, certainly 
of very many who call themselves democrats, there 
is a feeling not avowed, but real, that the mind and 
opinion and temper of the common folk do not mat- 
ter, that the science of government, like other sci- 
ences, should be left to the experts, and that there is 
something ridiculous in the spectacle of a bricklayer's 
labourer laying down the law in matters of high 
policy and passing judgment upon an authority who 

[285] 



has given his life to the study of the matter under 
judgment. 

As a matter of simple fact no Government ever 
has accomplished for long, save by virtue of the 
quality of those whom it governs, those ends we are 
now agreed upon as the proper ends of governments. 
Mexico or Venezuela may have constitutions as ex- 
cellent as that of England; they may have a small 
class drawn from their universities as educated as the 
members of our own Government. But neither the 
Constitution, nor the education of the minority, can 
assure to Mexico or Venezuela the results which are 
assured in England by virtue of the better general 
sense, understanding, capacity for self-government of 
the mass of English folk. And whether one tests 
this general proposition by such cases as Russia or 
India or certain cases of the past, its validity is un- 
shaken. 

Do we sufficiently realize that a nation cannot 
think, any more than a corporation can? That a 
nation's thought can only come from individual 
thought — by the thought of certain definite men. 
If a committee composed of Jones and Brown take 
a certain decision, and Jones vbtes a certain way be- 
cause Brown does, and Brown votes that way because 
Jones does, what is the basis of their " collective 
wisdom " ? Unless each questions his own mind, ex- 
ercises his own individual judgment, there could be 
no collective wisdom. Nothing multiplied a million 
times is still nothing. And a million Calibans arc 
not less dangerous than one.* 

* " Though the customs be both good as customs, and suitable to 
[286] 



The need of individuality in thought increases in 
direct ratio to the increasing complexity of our so- 
cial arrangements. The very fact that we do need 
more and more unity of action — ■ regimentation, 

him, yet to conform to custom, merely as custom, does not educate 
or develop in him any of the qualities which are the distinctive 
endowments of a human being. The human faculties of perception, 
judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral 
preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does 
anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no 
practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The men- 
tal and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by 
being used. The faculties are called into no exercise by doing a 
thing merely because others do it, no more than by believing a 
thing only because others believe it. If the grounds of an opinion 
are not conclusive to the person's own reason, his reason cannot be 
strengthened, but is likely to be weakened, by his adopting it: and 
if the inducements to an act are not such as are consentaneous to his 
own feelings and character (where affection, or the rights of others, 
are not concerned) it is so much done towards rendering his feel- 
ings and character inert and torpid, instead of active and energetic. 
" He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his 
plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape- 
like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs 
all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and 
judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, dis- 
crimination to decide and, when he has decided, firmness and self- 
control to hold to his deliberate decision. And these qualities he 
requires and exercises exactly in proportion as the part of his con- 
duct which he determines according to his own judgment and feel- 
ing is a large one. It is possible that he might be guided in some 
good path, and kept out of harm's way, without any of these things. 
But what will be his comparative worth as a human being? It 
really is of importance, not only what men do, but also what man- 
ner of men they are that do it. Among the works of man, which 
human life is rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the 
first in importance surely is man himself. Supposing it were possi- 
ble to get houses built, corn grown, battles fought, causes tried, and 
even churches erected and prayers said, by machinery — by automa- 
tons in human form — it would be a considerable loss to exchange 
for these automatons even the men and women who at present in- 
habit the more civilized parts of the world, and who assuredly are 
but starved specimens of what nature can and will produce. Hu- 
man nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to 
do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires 
to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency 
of the inward forces which make it a living thing." — Mill's "Lib- 
erty," p. 34 (Edition 1913). 

[287] 



regulation — in order to make a large population 
with many needs possible at all, is the reason mainly 
which makes it so important to preserve variety and 
freedom of individual thought. If ever we are to 
make the adjustments between the rival claims of 
the community and the individual, between national 
sovereignty or independence and international obliga- 
tion, between the need for common action and the 
need for individual judgment, if ever our minds are 
to be equal to the task of managing our increasingly 
complex society, we must preserve with growing 
scrupulousness the right of private judgment in po- 
litical matters. Because upon that capacity for pri- 
vate judgment, a capacity that can only be developed 
by its exercise, depends the capacity for public judg- 
ment, for political and social success, success, that is, 
in living together in this world of ours, most largely 
and most satisfactorily. 

The truth of which I am trying to remind the 
reader is not precisely a new discovery. It troubled 
Plato some four hundred years before Christ and was 
demonstrated by Mill some eighteen hundred and 
fifty after. But it is one of those truths that our 
primitive passions are perpetually smothering. If 
the great truths were not in this way repeatedly being 
smothered we should not now be fighting the ten thou- 
sandth war of history — the previous ones, of course, 
having been fought to establish a " lasting peace," 
though they do not seem to have been notably suc- 
cessful in that respect. 

It is not the mind of the heretic which suffers most, 
as Mill has reminded us, in the suppression of heret- 

[288] 



ical opinion. " The greatest harm done is to those 
who are not heretics but whose mental development 
is cramped and their reason cowed by the fear of 
heresy. ... It is not solely or chiefly to form great 
thinkers that freedom of thinking is required. On 
the contrary, it is as much and even more indis- 
pensable to enable average human beings to attain 
the mental stature which they are capable of. There 
have been, and may be again, great individual think- 
ers in a general atmosphere of mental slavery. But 
there has never been, nor ever will be in that atmos- 
phere an intellectually active people. Where any 
people has made a temporary approach to such a 
character, it has been because the dread of heterodox 
speculation was for a time suspended. Where there 
is a tacit convention that principles are not to be 
disputed; where the discussion of the greatest ques- 
tions which can occupy humanity is considered to be 
closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high 
scale of mental activity which has made some periods 
of history so remarkable. Never, when controversy 
avoided the subjects which are large and important 
enough to kindle enthusiasm, was the mind of a peo- 
ple stirred up from its foundations, and the impulse 
given which raised even persons of the most ordinary 
intellect to something of the dignity of thinking be- 
ings. Of such we had an example in the condition 
of Europe in the times immediately following the 
Reformation; another, and although limited to the 
Continent and to a more cultivated class, in the 
speculative movement in the latter half of the eight- 
eenth century; and a third, of still briefer duration, 

[289] 



in the Intellectual fermentation of Germany, during 
the Goethean and Fichtean period. These periods 
differed widely in the particular opinions which they 
developed ; but were alike In this, that during all three 
the yoke of authority was broken. In each an old 
mental despotism had been thrown off and no new 
one had yet taken Its place. . . . Every single im- 
provement which has since taken place in the human 
mind or in Institutions may be traced distinctly to one 
or other of them. Appearances have for some time 
indicated that all three impulses are well nigh spent; 
and we can expect no fresh start until we again assert 
our mental freedom." ^ 

If the German nation as a whole has lost its ca- 
pacity for sound political judgment, if Its public opin- 
ion is at times such as to shock civilization, It is 
largely because of the readiness of the Individual to 
yield to governmental authority In matters of opin- 
ion. You cannot have enough liberty without hav- 
ing too much of It. If the English race has devel- 
oped the capacity for freedom, democracy and par- 
liamentary government, a little perhaps ahead of 
that shown by other peoples, it is because obstinacy 
and stubbornness of private opinion have been found 
among us, and our Government heretofore has never 
been quite able, even in the very highest causes, to 
stamp It out. 

Mr. Edmond Holmes, the educationalist, in a work 
in which he attempts to analyze the moral and Intel- 
lectual causes of the catastrophe which has come upon 
Germany, a work which he has called " The Neme- 

1" Liberty," Longman's 1913 edition, p. 20. 
[290] 



sis of Docility," and in which he sketches the fashion 
in which the State has bit by bit captured the mind 
of the people, says: — 

If, as a soldier, the German citizen is the victim of the 
iron discipline on which the army has always prided itself, 
as a civilian he is subjected to a less severe but more insidious 
pressure. For, whatever harm this pressure may have done 
to his character he is in part to blame. As I have already 
pointed out he has allowed the State, through its control of 
the various moulds and organs of opinion, to suggest to him 
what he is to think, to believe and to say; and to do this so 
effectually that he has come at last to regard those thoughts, 
beliefs and words as his own. In other words, he has al- 
lowed the State to take possession of his moral and spiritual 
springs of action, and so usurp the functions of his own higher 
self. 

Under the influence of this insidious pressure, changes of 
vital importance may be expected to take place in his inner 
being. The stern, direct, dogmatic pressure of military dis- 
cipline, which tends to deaden the moral sensibility of the 
soldier, affects the citizen for two years of his early life, 
then its influence lessens and begins to wear off. But if his 
moral sensibility should survive or recover from that experi- 
ence, it would be exposed in civil life to a new danger, the 
danger of undergoing a morbid transformation in two dis- 
tinct directions. The man who allows the State to take 
the place of his higher self surrenders his judgment — his 
power and his right to think out and solve his moral prob- 
lems 'for himself ; and he loses his sense of responsibility to 
his own conscience. These changes come upon him so 
stealthily that he may never become aware of either of them. 
He may flatter himself that he is exercising his judgment, 
when all the time he is really thinking, desiring and purpos- 
ing whatever the State wishes him to think, desire and pur- 
pose. And he may hold himself responsible to his conscience, 
when all the time the State has usurped that seat of author- 

[291] 



ity, and is whispering from it suggestions to him which he 
mistakes for the dictate of his own higher self. And while 
the changes are going on in him, the uniform pressure of State 
control is crushing his individuality on all the planes of his 
being, and the dominant theory of the state is perverting the 
latent idealism of his heart. With all these insidious influ- 
ences brought to bear on him by the ubiquitous State can we 
wonder that the ethics of humanity cease to appeal to him, 
and that, as the soldier, looks at things from a point of view 
which is exclusively military, so he gets at last to look at 
things from a point of view which is exclusively national, 
and therefore anti-human and profoundly immoral. 

The question which It is surely the duty of every 
Englishman and American at this time to put to him- 
self Is this : are the tempers and tendencies of war- 
time pushing us towards methods and institutions 
similar to those which have been so disastrous for 
Germany? 

Always does authority In justification of Its pow- 
ers over opinion plead that the ideas which It Is sup- 
pressing are wicked and pernicious. It Is the plea 
now made. The Ideas professed by conscientious 
objectors are the result of loathsome moral perver- 
sion; those who oppose the war are outrageously 
wicked or absurd. Then In that case, they cannot 
possibly be a national danger, and can be safely ig- 
nored. Why need authority worry, for Instance, 
about our Russells, Eastmans, Stokes, Debs? 

Here are the constituted authorities having on 
their side all the vast powers of the State, the pres- 
tige of the established fact, the Irresistible current 
of nearly the whole national feeling, practically every 
paper In the country, the weight of wealth and fash- 

[292] 



Ion, practically all of organized religion. And there 
arises here and there an isolated thinker, with no 
great organizations behind him, no great daily pa- 
pers, no churches, but just the force of the ideas 
which he presents. And forthwith the State has to 
distort its already extraordinary powers to persecute 
these men, deprive them of their occupation, fine 
them, imprison them. Is it, then, afraid of the only 
thing these men possess: an Idea? If not, why not 
let them freely expound those ideas, circulate their 
leaflets, publish their pamphlets? If the ideas are 
as absurd and pernicious as the authorities would 
have us believe, who will Hsten? A few, let us say, 
the degenerates, the cowards, the foolish and un- 
worthy. But those could never be a danger to the 
State, could never seriously Interfere with the mili- 
tary machine. Why, then Introduce the methods of 
Torquemada for so negligible a danger? If those in 
authority really believed the ideas to be as monstrous 
and foolish as they pretend, they would simply 
take no notice of them. The ideas would condemn 
themselves. The fact that the authorities do believe 
it necessary to suppress the dissemination of those 
Ideas is demonstration that they feel at the bottom of 
their hearts that " there is something in them " ; that 
they are capable, if freely disseminated, of reaching 
others than the negligible and unworthy. They dis- 
like these ideas, they fear them. And that is why 
they suppress them. 

And, unfortunately, we cannot console ourselves 
with the thought that force is never successful In the 
suppression of ideas. It Is often successful. The 

[293] 



quality of our society improves so slowly largely be- 
cause it is so successful. We know of the heretics 
that have survived, that have given us the ideas that 
have served us best, that have given us the advances 
that we have made. But what of the heretics that 
would have given us those liberations centuries ear- 
lier if we had not managed to suppress them? 

The Europe of the past entangled herself in a net 
of her own weaving — the work largely of theolog- 
ical professors, as our net today is woven so largely 
by political professors. Each religious group had 
convinced itself that everything it most valued on 
earth, the existence of any kind of morality, its spir- 
itual freedom here as well as Its eternal salvation 
later, depended upon its defending Itself by mlhtary 
power against the power of other groups — defence, 
of course, involving preventive wars. There was 
only one thing which could, and finally did, put an 
end to the resulting welter : a revision of the prevail- 
ing conceptions as to the relation of military force 
and power over the other group to those moral and 
spiritual values. 

The modification of conception, theory, " sover- 
eign idea," what you will, was only possible as the 
result of certain heresies, of the conflict of one Idea 
with another, and so the correction of both. But 
that one solution, the one means of egress, the man 
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe 
deliberately closed by making heresy the gravest 
moral offence which men could commit. Each side 
killed its heretic. What was more important was 
that they killed with him the capacity of the mass to 

[294] 



think clearly — or to think at all on the subjects that 
the heretic raised, for a community which has no 
heretics, which is of one mind on a given matter, is 
on that matter mindless. If the rival communities 
had been successful in the attempt to protect them- 
selves by military means from heresy within and 
without, we should have been fighting wars of re- 
ligion yet, and perhaps organizing our massacres of 
St. Bartholomew. But certain forces, mechanical, 
like the cheapening of printing; moral, like the readi- 
ness of the heretic to suffer, were too strong for the 
imperfect organization of the State or the Holy Of- 
fice. But the modem State — as Germany proves 
— can be more efficient in the control of opinion and 
the consequent suppression of heresy. And we can 
hardly doubt that if unity of political belief seems — 
even though it may not really be — necessary to the 
successful conversion of a nation into a military in- 
strument, the modern State will kill political heresy 
even more successfully than the Church-State killed 
religious heresy; and in lesser or greater degree with 
the analogous result of rendering Europe impotent 
to solve the very problems with which our institutions 
were created to grapple. 



[295] 



APPENDIX I 

LABOUR AND THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER 

A DRAFT REPORT ON RECONSTRUCTION 

[The folloiving Draft Report on the General Policy of the Party 
on "Reconstruction" has been prepared by a Sub-Committee of the 
Executive for the consideration of the Party; and is submitted by 
the Executive to the annual Conference at Nottingham, not for 
adoption but luith a viezv to its being specially referred to the con- 
stituent organizations for discussion and eventual submission to the 
Party Conference to be arranged for June next, or a special Confer- 
ence should a General Election render it necessary.'] 

It behooves the Labour Party, in formulating its own programme 
for Reconstruction after the war, and in criticizing the various 
preparations and plans that are being made by the present Govern- 
ment, to look at the problem as a v^hole. We have to make it clear 
what it is that we wish to construct. It is important to emphasize 
the fact that, whatever may be the case with regard to other political 
parties, our detailed practical proposals proceed from definitely held 
principles. 

THE END OF A CIVILIZATION 

We need to beware of patchwork. The view of the Labour Party 
is that what has to be reconstructed after the war is not this or that 
Government Department, or this or that piece of social machinery; 
but, so far as Britain is concerned, society itself. The individual 
worker, or for that matter the individual statesman, immersed in 
daily routine — like the individual soldier in a battle — easily fails 
to understand the magnitude and far-reaching importance of what 
is taking place around him. How does it fit together as a whole? 
How does it look from a distance? Count Okuma, one of the oldest, 
most experienced and ablest of the statesmen of Japan, watching the 
present conflict from the other side of the globe, declares it to be 
nothing less than the death of European civilization. Just as in the 
past the civilizations of Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, and the 
great Roman Empire have been successively destroyed, so, in the 
judgment of this detached observer, the civilization of all Europe is 
even now receiving its death-blow. We of the Labour Party can 
JO far agree in this estimate as to recognize, in the present world 

[297] 



catastrophe, If not the death, in Europe, of civilization itself, at any 
rate the culmination and collapse of a distinctive industrial civiliza- 
tion, which the workers will not seek to reconstruct. At such times 
of crisis it is easier to slip into ruin than to progress into higher 
forms of organization. That is the problem as it presents itself to 
the Labour Party today. 

What this war is consuming is not merely the security, the homes, 
the livelihood and the lives of millions of innocent families, and an 
enormous proportion of all the accumulated wealth of the world, 
but also the very basis of the peculiar social order in which it has 
arisen. The individualist system of capitalist production, based on 
the private ownership and competitive administration of land and 
capital, with its reckless "profiteering" and wage-slavery; with 
its glorification of the unhampered struggle for the means of life and 
its hypocritical pretence of the " survival of the fittest " ; with the 
monstrous inequality of circumstances which it produces and the 
degradation and brutalization, both moral and spiritual, resulting 
therefrom, may, we hope, indeed have received a death-blow. With 
it must go the political system and ideas in which it naturally found 
expression. We of the Labour Party, whether in opposition or in 
due time called upon to form an Administration, will certainly lend 
no hand to its revival. On the contrary, we shall do our utmost to 
see that it is buried with the millions whom it has done to death. If 
we in Britain are to escape from the decay of civilization itself, which 
the Japanese statesman foresees, we must ensure that what is pres- 
ently to be built up is a new social order, based not on fighting, but 
on fraternity — not on the competitive struggle for the means of 
bare life, but on a deliberately planned co-operation in production 
and distribution for the benefit of all who participate by hand or by 
brain — not on the utmost possible inequality of riches, but on a 
syste.natic approach towards a healthy equality of material circum- 
stances for every person born into the world — not on an enforced 
dominion over subject nations, subject races, subject Colonies, subject 
classes or a subject sex, but, in industry as well as in government, 
on that equal freedom, that general consciousness of consent, and 
that widest possible participation in power, both economic and po- 
litical, which is characteristic of Democracy. We do not, of course 
pretend that it is possible, even after the drastic clearing away that 
is now going on, to build society anew, in a year or two of feverish 
" Reconstruction." What the Labour Party intends to satisfy itself 
about is that each brick that it helps to lay shall go to erect the 
structure that it intends, and no other. 



THE PILLARS OF THE HOUSE 

We need not here recapitulate, one by one, the difiFerent items in 
the Labour Party's programme, which successive Party Conferences 
have adopted. These proposals, some of them in various publica- 
tions worked out in practical detail, are often carelessely derided as 
impracticable, even by the politicians who steal them piecemeal from 
usl The members of the Labour Party, themselves actually working 

[298] 



by hand or by brain, in close contact with the facts, have perhaps 
at all times a more accurate appreciation of what is practicable, in 
industry as in politics, than those who depend solely on academic 
instruction or are biased by great possessions. But today no man 
dares to say that anything is impracticable. The war, which has 
scared the old Political Parties right out of their dogmas, has taught 
every statesman and every Government official, to his enduring sur- 
prise, how very much more can be done along the lines that we have 
laid down than he had ever before thought possible. What we now 
promulgate as our policy, whether for opposition or for office, is not 
merely this or that specific reform, but a deliberately thought-out, 
systematic, and comprehensive plan for that immediate social re- 
building which any Ministry, whether or not it desires to grapple 
with the problem, will be driven to undertake. The Four Pillars of 
the House that we propose to erect, resting upon the common founda- 
tion of the Democratic control of society in all its activities, may be 
termed, respectively: 

(a) The Universal Enforcement of the National Minimum; 

(b) The Democratic Control of Industry; 

(c) The Revolution in National Finance; and 

(d) The Surplus Wealth for the Common Good. 

The various detailed proposals of the Labour Party, herein briefly 
summarized, rest on these four pillars, and can best be appreciated 
in connection with them. 

THE UNIVERSAL ENFORCEMENT OF A NATIONAL 

MINIMUM 

The first principle of the Labour Party — in significant contrast 
with those of the Captialist System, whether expressed by the Liberal 
or by the Conservative Party — is the securing to every member of 
the community, in good times and bad alike (and not only to the 
strong and able, the well-born or the fortunate), of all the requisites 
of healthy life and worthy citizenship. This is in no sense a 
" class " proposal. Such an amount of social protection of the indi- 
vidual, however poor and lowly, from birth to death is, as the econo- 
mist now knows, as indispensable to fruitful co-operation as it is to 
successful combination ; and it affords the only complete safeguard 
against that insidious Degradation of the Standard of Life, which is 
the worst economic and social calamity to which any community can 
be subjected. We are members one of another. No man liveth to 
himself alone. If any, even the humblest is made to suffer, the 
whole community and every one of us, whether or not we recognize 
the fact, is thereby injured. Generation after generation this has 
been the corner-stone of the faith of Labour. It will be the guid- 
ing principle of any Labour Government, 

The Legislative Regulation of Employment 

Thus it is that the Labour Party to-day stands for the universal 
application of the Policy of the National Minimum, to which (as 

[299] 



embodied in the successive elaborations of the Factory, Mines, 
Railways, Shops, Merchant Shipping, and Truck Acts, the Public 
Health, Housing, and Education Acts and the miraimum Wage 
Act — all of them aiming at the enforcement of at least the pre- 
scribed Minimum of Leisure, Health, Education, and Subsistence) 
the spokesmen of Labour have already gained the support of the en- 
lightened statesmen and economists of the world. All these laws 
purporting to protect against extreme Degradation of the Standard 
of Life need considerable improvement and extension, whilst their 
administration leaves much to be desired. For instance, the Work- 
men's Compensation Act fails, shamefully, not merely to secure 
proper provision for all the victims of accident and industrial dis- 
ease, but what is much more important, does not succeed in pre- 
venting their continual increase. The amendment and consolida- 
tion of the Factories and Workshop Acts, with their extension to all 
employed persons, is long overdue, and it will be the policy of 
Labour greatly to strengthen the staff of inspectors, especially by 
the addition of more men and women of actual experience of the 
workshop and the mine. The Coal Mines (Minimum Wage) Act 
must certainly be maintained in force, and suitably amended, so as 
both to ensure greater uniformity of conditions among the several 
districts, and to make the District Minimum in all cases an effective 
reality. The same policy will, in the interests of the agricultural 
labourers, dictate the perpetuation of the Legal Wage clauses of 
the new Corn Law just passed for a term of five years, and the 
prompt amendment of any defects that may be revealed in their 
working. And, is> view of the fact that many millions of wage-earn- 
ers, notably women and the less-skilled workmen in various oc- 
cupations, are unable by combination to obtain wages adequate for 
decent maintenance in health, the Labour Party intends to see that 
the Trade Boards Act is suitably amended and made to apply to all 
industrial employments in which any considerable number of those 
employed obtain less than 30s. per week. This minimum of not less 
than 30s. per week (which will need revision according to the level 
of prices) ought to be the very lowest statutory base line for the 
least skilled adult workers, men or women, in any occupation, in all 
parts of the United Kingdom. 

The Organization of Demobilization 

But the coming industrial dislocation, which will inevitably fol- 
low the discharge from war service of half of all the working 
population, imposes new obligations upon the community. The de- 
mobilization and discharge of the eight million wage-earners now 
being paid from public funds, either for service with the colours 
or in munition work and other war trades, will bring to the whole 
wage-earning class grave peril of Unemployment, Reduction of 
Wages, and a Lasting Degradation of the Standard of Life, which 
can be prevented only by deliberate National Organization. The 
Labour Party has repeatedly called upon the present Government 
to formulate its plan, and to make in advance all arrangements 
necessary for coping with so unparalleled a dislocation. The pol- 

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icy to which the Labour Party commits itself is unhesitating and un- 
compromising. It is plain that regard should be had, in stopping 
Government orders, reducing the staff of the National Factories and 
demobilizing the Array, to the actual state of employment in par- 
ticular industries and in different districts, so as both to release first 
the kinds of labour most urgently required for the revival of peace 
production, and to prevent any congestion of the market. It is no 
less imperative that suitable provision against being turned sud- 
denly adrift without resources should be made, not only for the 
soldiers, but also for the three million operatives in munition work 
and other war trades, who will be discharged long before most of 
the Army can be disbanded. On this important point, which is 
the most urgent of all, the present Government has, we believe, 
down to the present hour, formulated no plan, and come to no 
decision, and neither the Liberal nor the Conservative Party has 
apparently deemed the matter worthy of agitation. Any Gov- 
ernment which should allow the discharged soldier or munition 
worker to fall into the clutches of charity or the Poor Law would 
have to be instantly driven from office by an outburst of popular 
indignation. What every one of them who is not wholly disabled 
will look for is a situation in accordance with his capacity. 

Securing Employment for All 

The Labour Party insists — as no other political party has thought 
fit to do — that the obligation to find suitable employment in pro- 
ductive work for all these men and women rests upon the Govern- 
ment for the time being. The work of re-settling the disbanded 
soldiers and discharged munition workers into new situations is a 
national obligation ; and the Labour Party emphatically protests 
against it being regarded as a matter for private charity. It 
strongly objects to this public duty being handed over either to 
committees of philanthropists or benevolent societies, or to any of 
the military or recruiting authorities. The policy of the Labour 
Party in this matter is to make the utmost use of the Trade Unions, 
and equally for the brain workers, of the various Professional As- 
sociations. In view of the fact that, in any trade, the best organi- 
zation for placing men in situations is a national Trade Union hav- 
ing local branches throughout the kingdom, every soldier should be 
allowed, if he chooses, to have a duplicate of his industrial dis- 
charge notice sent out, one month before the date fixed for his dis- 
charge, to the Secretary of the Trade Union to which he belongs 
or wishes to belong. Apart from this use of the Trade Union (and 
a corresponding use of the Professional Association) the Govern- 
ment must, of course, avail itself of some such public machinery as 
that of the Employment Exchanges; but before the existing Ex- 
changes (which will need to be greatly extended) can receive the 
co-operation and support of the organized Labour Movement, with- 
out which their operations can never be fully successful, it is im- 
perative that they should be drastically reformed, on the lines laid 
down in the Demobilization Report of the " Labour after the War " 
Joint Committee; and, in particular, that each Exchange should be 

[301] 



placed effectively under the supervision and control of a Joint Com- 
mittee of Employers and Trade Unionists in equal numbers. 

The responsibility of the Government, for the time being, in 
the grave industrial crisis that demobilization will produce, goes, 
however, far beyond the eight million men and women whom the 
various departments will suddenly discharge from their own service. 
The effect of this peremptory discharge on all the other workers has 
also to be taken into account. To the Labour Party it will seem the 
supreme concern of the Government of the day to see to it that there 
shall be, as a result of the gigantic " General Post " which it will 
itself have deliberately set going, nowhere any Degradation of the 
Standard of Life. The Government has pledged itself to restore 
the Trade Union conditions and " pre-war practices " of the work- 
shop, which the Trade Unions patriotically gave up at the direct 
request of the Government itself; and his solemn pledge must be 
fulfilled, of course in the spirit as well as in the letter. The Labour 
Party, moreover, holds it to be the duty of the Government of the 
day to take all necessary steps to prevent the Standard Rates of 
Wages, in any trade or occupation whatsoever, from suffering any 
reduction, relatively to the contemporary cost of living. Unfor- 
tunately, the present Government, like the Liberal and Conservative 
Parties, so far refuses to speak on this important matter with any 
clear voice. We claim that it should be a cardinal point of Gov- 
ernment policy to make it plain to every capitalist employer that 
any attempt to reduce the customary rate of wages when peace 
comes, or to take advantage of the dislocation of demobilization to 
worsen the conditions of employment in any grade whatsoever, will 
certainly lead to embittered industrial strife, which will be in the 
highest degree detrimental to the national interests ; and that the 
Government of the day will not hesitate to take all necessary steps 
to avert such a calamity. In the great impending crisis the Govern- 
ment of the day should not only, as the greatest employer of both 
brainworkers and manual workers, set a good example in this re- 
spect but should also actively seek to influence private employers by 
proclaiming in advance that it will not itself attempt to lower the 
Standard Rates of conditions in public employment; by announcing 
that it will insist on the most rigorous observance of the Fair Wages 
Clause in all public contracts, and by explicitly recommending 
every Local Authority to adopt the same policy. 

But nothing is more dangerous to the Standard of Life, or so 
destructive of those minimum conditions of healthy existence, which 
must in the interests of the community be assured to every worker, 
than any widespread or continued unemployment. It has always 
been a fundamental principle of the Labour Party (a point on which 
significantly enough it has not been followed by either of the other 
political parties) that in a modern industrial community, it is one of 
the foremost obligations of the Government to find, for every willing 
worker whether by hand or by brain productive work at Standard 
Rates. 

It is accordingly the duty of the Government to adopt a policy 
of deliberately and systematically preventing the occurrence of un- 
employment instead of (as heretofore) letting unemployment occur, 

[302] 



and then seeking vainly and expensively to relieve the unemployed. 
It is now known that the Government can if it chooses, arrange the 
Public Works and the orders of National Departments and Local 
Authorities in such a way as to maintain the aggregate demand 
for labour in the whole kingdom (including that of capitalist em- 
ployers) approximately at a uniform level from year to year; 
and it is therefore a primary obligation of the Government to pre- 
vent any considerable or widespread fluctuations in the total num- 
bers employed in times of good or bad trade. But this is not all. 
In order to prepare for the possibility of there being any unemploy- 
ment, either in the course of demobilization or in the first years of 
peace it is essential that the Government should make all necessary 
preparations for putting instantly in hand directly or through the 
Local Authorities, such urgently needed public works as (a) the 
rehousing of the population alike in rural districts, mining villages, 
and town slums, to the extent, possibly, of a million new 
cottages and an outlay of 300 millions sterling; {b) the immediate 
making good of the shortage of schools, training colleges, technical 
colleges, &c., and the engagement of the necessary additional teach- 
ing, clerical and administrative staifs; (c) new roads; (d) light 
railways; (e) the unification and reorganization of the railway and 
canal system; (/) afforestation; (g) the reclamation of land; (A) 
the development and better equipment of our ports and harbours; 
(i) the opening up of access to land by co-operative small holdings 
and in other practicable ways. Moreover, in order to relieve any 
pressure of an overstocked labour market, the opportunity should be 
taken, if unemployment should threaten to become widespread, (a) 
immediately to raise the school leaving age to sixteen; {b) greatly 
to increase the number of scholarships and bursaries for Secondary 
and Higher Education; and (c) substantially to shorten the hours 
of labour of all young persons, even to a greater extent than the 
eight hours per week contemplated in the new Education Bill, in 
order to enable them to attend technical and other classes in the 
daytime. Finally, wherever practicable, the hours of adult labour 
should be reduced to not more than forty-eight per week, without 
reduction of the Standard Rates of Wages. There can be no eco- 
nomic or other justification for keeping any man or woman to work 
for long hours, or at overtime, whilst others are unemployed. 

Social Insurance Against Unemployment 

In so far as the Government fails to prevent Unemployment — 
wherever it finds it impossible to discover for any willing worker, 
man or woman, a suitable situation at the Standard Rate — the 
Labour Party holds that the Government must, in the interest of 
the community as a whole, provide him or her with adequate main- 
tenance, either with such arrangements for honourable employment 
or with such useful training as may be found practicable, accord- 
ing to age, health and previous occupation. In many ways the best 
form of provision for those who must be unemployed, because the 
industrial organization of the community so far breaks down as to 
be temporarily unable to set them to work, is the Out of Work 

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Benefit afforded by a well administered Trade Union. This is a 
special tax on the Trade Unionists themselves which they have vol- 
untarily undertaken, but towards which they have a right to claim 
a pubhc subvention — ■ a subvention which was actually granted by 
Parliament (though only to the extent of a couple of shillings or 
so per week) under Part II. of the Insurance Act. The arbitrary 
withdrawal by the Government in 1915 of this statutory right of 
the Trade Unions was one of the least excusable of the war econo- 
mies; and the Labour Party must insist on the resumption of this 
subvention immediately the war ceases, and on its increase to at 
least half the amount spent in Out of Work Benefit. The exten- 
sion of State Unemployment Insurance to other occupations may 
afford a convenient method of providing for such of the Un- 
employed, especially in the case of badly paid women workers, and 
the less skilled men, whom it is difficult to organize in Trade Un- 
ions. But the weekly rate of "the State Unemployment Benefits 
needs, in these days of high prices, to be considerably raised ; 
whilst no industry ought to be compulsorily brought within its 
scope against the declared will of the workers concerned, and 
especially of their Trade Unions. In one way or another remun- 
erative employment or honourable maintenance must be found for 
every willing worker, by hand or by brain, in bad times as well as 
in good. It is clear that, in the twentieth century, there must be no 
question of driving the Unemployed to anything so obsolete and dis- 
credited as either private charity, with its haphazard and ill-con- 
sidered doles, or the Poor Law, with the futilities and barbarities of 
its " Stone Yard " or its " Able-bodied Test Workhouse." Only on 
the basis of a universal application of the Policy of the National 
Minimum, affording complete security against destitution, in sick- 
ness and health, in good times and bad alike, to every member of 
the community of whatever age or sex, can any worthy social order 
be built up. 

THE DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF INDUSTRY 

The universal application of the Policy of the National Minimum 
is, of course, only the first of the Pillars of the House that the La- 
bour Party intends to see built. What marks off this Party most dis- 
tinctively from any of the other political parties is its demand for 
the full and genuine adoption of the principle of Democracy. The 
first condition of Democracy is effective personal freedom. This 
has suffered so many encroachments during the war that it is neces- 
sary to state with clearness that the complete removal of all the war- 
time restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of publication, 
freedom of the press, freedom of travel and freedom of choice of 
place of residence and kind of employment must take place the day 
after Peace is declared. The Labour Party declared emphatically 
against any continuance of the Military Service Acts a moment 
longer than the imperative requirements of the war excuse. But 
individual freedom is of little use without complete political rights. 
The Labour Party sees its repeated demands largely conceded in the 
present Representation of the People Act, but not yet wholly satis- 

[304] 



fied. The Party stands, as heretofore, for complete Adult Suffrage, 
with not more than a three months' residential qualification, for 
effective provision for absent electors to vote, for absolutely equal 
rights for both sexes, for the same freedom to exercise civic rights 
for the " common soldier " as for the officer, for Shorter Parliamfints, 
for the complete Abolition of the House of Lords, and for a most 
strenuous opposition to any new Second Chamber, whether elected 
or not, having in it any element of Heredity or Privilege, or of the 
control of the House of Commons by any party or class. But unlike 
the Conservative and Liberal Parties, the Labour Party insists on 
Democracy in industry as well as in government. It demands the 
progressive elimination from the control of industry of the private 
capitalist, individual or joint-stock; and the setting free of all who 
work, whether by hand or by brain, for the service of the community, 
and of the community only. And the Labour Party refuses absolutely 
to believe that the British people will permanently tolerate any re- 
construction or perpetuation of the disorganization, waste and in- 
efficiency involved in the abandonment of British industry to a jost- 
ling crowd of separate private employers, with their minds bent, 
not on the service of the community, but — by the very law of their 
being — only on the utmost possible profiteering. What the nation 
needs is undoubtedly a great bound onwards in its aggregate pro- 
ductivity. But this cannot be secured merely by pressing the 
manual workers to more strenuous toil, or even by encouraging the 
" Captains of Industry " to a less wasteful organization of their 
several enterprises on a profit-making basis. What the Labour 
Party looks to is a genuinely scientific reorganization of the na- 
tion's industry, no longer deflected by individual profiteering, on 
the basis of the Common Ownership of the means of Production ; 
the equitable sharing of the proceeds among all who participate in 
any capacity and only among these, and the adoption, in particular 
services and occupation, of those systems and methods of adminis- 
tration and control that may be found, in practice, best to promote, 
not profiteering, but the public interest. 

Immediate Nationalization 

The Labour Party stands not merely for the principle of the 
Common Ownership of the nation's land, to be applied as suitable 
opportunities occur, but also, specifically, for the immediate Nation- 
alization of Railways, Mines, and the production of Electrical 
Power. We hold that the very foundation of any successful re- 
organization of British Industry must necessarily be found in the 
provision of the utmost facilities for transport and communication, 
the production of power at the cheapest possible rate, and the most 
economical supply of both electrical energy and coal to every corner 
of the kingdom. Hence the Labour Party stands, unhesitatingly, 
for the National Ownership and administration of the Railways and 
Canals, and their union, along with Harbours and Roads and the 
Posts and Telegraphs — not to say also the great lines of steamers 
which could at once be owned, if not immediately directly managed 
in detail, by the Government — in a united national service of Cora- 

[305] 



munlcation and Transport; to be worked, unhampered by capitalist, 
private or purely local interests (and with a steadily increasing par- 
ticipation of the organized workers in the management, both central 
and local), exclusively for the common good. If any Government 
should be so misguided as to propose, when peace comes^ to hand the 
railways back to the shareholders; or should show itself so spend- 
thrift of the nation's property as to give these shareholders any en- 
larged franchise by presenting them with the economies of unifica- 
tion or the profits of increased railway rates; or so extravagant 
as to bestow public funds on the re-equipment of privately owned 
lines — all of which things are now being privately intrigued for by 
the railway interests — the Labour Party will offer any such project 
the most strenuous opposition. The railways and canals, like the 
roads, must henceforth belong to the public, and to the public alone. 

In the production of Electricity, for cheap Power, Light and 
Heating, this country has so far failed, because of hampering private 
interests, to take advantage of science. Even in the largest cities 
we still " peddle " our Electricity on a comparatively small scale. 
What is called for, immediately after the war, is the erection of a 
score of gigantic " super-power stations," which could generate, at 
incredibly cheap rates, enough electricity for the use of every in- 
dustrial establishment and every private household in Great Britain ; 
the present municipal and joint-stock electrical plants being uni- 
versally linked up and used for local distribution. This is in- 
evitably the future of Electricity. It is plain that so great and so 
powerful an enterprise, affecting every industrial enterprise and, 
eventually every household, must not be allowed to pass into the 
hands of private capitalists. They are already pressing the Gov- 
ernment for the concession, and neither the Liberal nor the Con- 
servative Party has yet made up its mind to a refusal of such 
a new endowment of profiteering in what will presently be the 
lifeblood of modern productive industry. The Labour Party de- 
mands that the production of Electricity on the necessary gigantic 
scale shall be made, from the start (with suitable arrangements for 
municipal co-operation in local distribution), a national enterprise, 
to be worked exclusively with the object of supplying the whole 
kingdom with the cheapest possible Power, Light, and Heat. 

But with the Railways and the generation of Electricity in the 
hands of the public, it would be criminal folly to leave to the 
present 1,500 colliery companies the power of " holding up " the 
coal supply. These are now all working under public control, on 
terms that virtually afford to their shareholders a statutory guar- 
antee of their swollen incomes. The Labour Party demands the 
immediate Nationalization of Mines, the extraction of coal and iron 
being worked as a public service (with a steadily increasing par- 
ticipation in the management, both central and local, of the various 
grades of persons employed) ; and the whole business of the retail 
distribution of household coal being undertaken, as a local public 
service, by the elected Municipal or County Councils. And there 
is no reason why coal should fluctuate in price any more than rail- 
way fares, or why the consumer should be made to pay more in 
winter than in summer, or in one town than another. What the 

[306] 



Labour Party would aim at Is, for household coal of standard qual- 
ity, a fixed and uniform price for the whole kingdom, payable by 
rich and poor alike, as unalterable as the penny postage stamp. 

But the sphere of immediate Nationalization is not restricted to 
these great industries. We shall never succeed in putting the gi- 
gantic system of Health Insurance on a proper footing, or secure a 
clear field for the beneficent work of the Friendly Societies, or 
gain a free hand for the necessary development of the urgently 
called for Ministry of Health and the Local Public Health Service, 
until the nation expropriates the profit-making Industrial Insurance 
Companies, which now so tyrannously exploit the people with their 
wasteful house-to-house Industrial Life Assurance. Only by such 
an expropriation of Life Assurance Companies can we secure the 
universal provision, free from the burdensome toll of weekly pence, 
of the indispensable Funeral Benefit. Nor is it in any sense a 
" class " measure. Only by the assumption by a State Department 
of the whole business of Life Assurance can the millions of policy 
holders of all classes be completely protected against the possibly 
calamitous results of the depreciation of securities and suspension 
of bonuses which the war is causing. Only by this means can the 
great staff of Insurance agents find their proper place as Civil Serv- 
ants, with equitable conditions of employment, compensation for any 
disturbance and security of tenure. In a nationally organized public 
service for the discharge of the steadily Increasing functions of the 
Government In Vital Statistics and Social Insurance. 

In quite another sphere the Labour Party sees the key to Temper- 
ance Reform in taking the entire manufacture and retailing of al- 
coholic drink out of the hands of those who find profit in promoting 
the utmost possible consumption. This Is essentially a case in which 
the people, as a whole, must assert Its right to full and unfettered 
power for dealing with the licensing question In accordance with 
local opinion. For this purpose, localities should have conferred 
upon them facilities 

(a) To prohibit the sale of liquor within their boundaries; ^ 
{b) To reduce the number of licences and regulate the conditions 

under which they may be held ; and 
(c) If a locality decides that licenses are to be granted, to deter- 
mine whether such licenses shall be under private or any 
form of public control. 

Municipalization 

Other main industries, especially those now becoming monopo- 
lized, should be nationalized as opportunity offers. Moreover, the 
Labour Party holds that the Municipalities should not confine their 
activities to the necessarily costly services of Education, Sanitation 
and Police; nor yet rest content with acquiring control of the local 
Water, Gas, Electricity, and Tramways; but that every facility 
should be afforded to them to acquire (easily, quickly and cheaply) 
all the land they require, and to extend their enterprises In Housing 
and Town Planning, Parks, and Public Libraries, the provision of 
music and the organization of recreation; and also to undertake, 

[307] 



besides the retailing of coal, other services of common utility, par< 
ticularly the local supply of milk, wherever this is not already fully 
and satisfactorily organized by a Co-operative Society. 

Control of Capitalist Industry 

Meanwhile, however, we ought not to throw away the valuable 
experience now gained by the Government in its assumption of the 
importation of wheat, wool, metals, and other commodities, and in 
its control of the shipping, woollen, leather, clothing, boot and shoe, 
milling, baking, butchering, and other industries. The Labour 
Party holds that, whatever may have been the shortcomings of 
this Government importation and control, it has demonstrably pre- 
vented a lot of " profiteering." Nor can it end immediately on 
the Declaration of Peace. The people will be extremely foolish if 
they ever allow their indispensable industries to slip back into the 
unfettered control of private capitalists, who are, actually at the 
instance of the Government itself, now rapidly combining, trade by 
trade, into monopolist Trusts, which may presently become as ruth- 
less in their extortion as the worst American examples. Standing 
as it does for the Democratic Control of Industry, the Labour Party 
would think twice before it sanctioned any abandonment of the 
present profitable centralization of purchase of raw materials; of 
the present carefully organized " rationing," by joint committees of 
the trades concerned, of the several establishments with the materi- 
als they require ; of the present elaborate system of " costing " and 
public audit of manufacturers' accounts, so as to stop the waste 
heretofore caused by the mechanical inefficiency of the more back- 
ward firms; of the present salutary publicity of manufacturing 
processes and expenses thereby ensured; and, on the information 
thus obtained (in order never again to revert to the old-time 
profiteering) of the present rigid fixing, for standardised products, 
of maximum prices at the factory, at the warehouse of the whole- 
sale trader and in the retail shop. This opinion of the retail prices 
of household commodities is emphatically the most practical of 
all political issues to the woman elector. The male politicians have 
too long neglected the grievances of the small household, which is 
the prey of every profiteering combination; and neither the Liberal 
nor the Conservative party promises, in this respect, any amendment. 
This, too, is in no sense a " class " measure. It is, so the Labour 
Party holds, just as much the function of Government, and just as 
necessary a part of the Democratic Regulation of Industry, to safe- 
guard the interests of the community as a whole, and those of all 
grades and sections of private consumers, in the matter of prices, 
as it is, by the Factory and Trade Boards Acts, to protect the rights 
of the wage-earning producers in the matter of wages, hours of 
labour, and sanitation. 

A REVOLUTION IN NATIONAL FINANCE 

In taxation, also, the interests of the professional and house- 
keeping classes are at one with those of the manual workers. Too 

[308] 



long has our National Finance been regulated, contrary to the teach- 
ing of Political Economy, according to the wishes of the possessing 
classes and the profits of the financiers. The colossal expenditure 
involved in the present war (of which, against the protest of the 
Labour Party, only a quarter has been raised by taxation, whilst 
three-quarters have been borrowed at onerous rates of interest, to 
be a burden on the nation's future) brings things to a crisis. When 
peace comes, capital will be needed for all sorts of social enterprises, 
and the resources of Government will necessarily have to be vastly 
greater than they were before the war. Meanwhile innumerable 
new private fortunes are being heaped up by those who take ad- 
vantage of the nation's need; and the one-tenth of the population 
which owns nine-tenths of the riches of the United Kingdom, far 
from being made poorer, will find itself in the aggregate, as a 
result of the war, drawing in rent and interest and dividends a 
larger nominal income than ever before. Such a position demands 
a revolution in national finance. How are we to discharge a public 
debt that may well reach the almost incredible figure of 7,000 mill- 
ion pounds sterling, and at the same time raise an annual revenue 
which, for local as well as central government, must probably reach 
1,000 millions a year? It is over this burden of taxation that the 
various political parties will be found to be most sharply divided. 

The Labour Party stands for such a system of taxation as will 
yield all the necessary revenue to the Government without en- 
croaching on the Prescribed National Minimum Standard of Life 
of any family whatsoever; without hampering production or dis- 
couraging any useful personal effort, and with the nearest possible 
approximation to equality of sacrifice. We definitely repudiate all 
proposals for a Protective Tariff, in whatever specious guise they 
may be cloaked, as a device for burdening the consumer with un- 
necessarily enhanced prices, to the profit of the capitalist employer 
or landed proprietor, who avowedly expects his profits or rent to be 
increased thereby. We shall strenuously oppose any taxation, of 
whatever kind, which would increase the price of food or of any 
other necessary of life. We hold that indirect taxation on com- 
modities, whether by Customs or Excise, should be strictly limited 
luxuries; and concentrated principally on those of which it is 
socially desirable that the consumption should be actually discour- 
aged. We are at one with the manufacturer, the farmer and the 
trader in objecting to taxes interfering with production or com- 
merce, or hampering transport and communications. In all these 
matters — once more in contrast with the other political parties, and 
by no means in the interests of the wage-earners alone — the Labour 
Party demands that the very definite teachings of economic science 
should no longer be disregarded. 

For the raising of the greater part of the revenue now required 
the Labour Party looks to the direct taxation of the incomes above 
the necessary cost of family maintenance; and for the requisite ef- 
fort to pay off the National Debt, to the direct taxation of private 
fortunes both during life and at death. The Income Tax and Sup- 
ertax ought at once to be thoroughly reformed in assessment and 
collection, in abatements and allowances, and in graduation and 

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differentiation, so as to levy the required total sum in such a way 
as to make the real sacrilice of all the taxpayers as nearly as pos- 
sible equal. This would involve assessment by families instead of 
by individual persons, so that the burden is alleviated in proportion 
to the number of persons to be maintained. It would involve the 
raising of the present unduly low minimum income assessable to the 
tax, and the lightening of the present unfair burden on the great 
mass of professional and small trading classes by a new scale of 
graduation, rising from a penny in the pound on the smallest assess- 
able income up to sixteen or even nineteen shillings in the pound on 
the highest income of the millionaires. It would involve bringing 
into assessment the numerous windfalls of profit that now escape, 
and a further differentiation between essentially different kinds of 
income. The Excess Profits Tax might well be retained in an ap- 
propriate form; while so long as Mining Royalties exist the Mineral 
Rights Duty ought to be increased. The steadily rising unearned 
Increment of urban and mineral land ought, by an appropriate direct 
Taxation of Land Values, to be wholly brought into the Public 
Exchequer. At the same time, for the service and redemption of 
the National Debt, the Death Duties ought to be regraduated, much 
more strictly collected, and greatly increased. In this matter we 
need, in fact, completely to reverse our point of view, and to re- 
arrange the whole taxation of inheritance from the standpoint of 
asking what is the maximum amount that any rich man should be 
permitted at death to divert, by his will, from the National Exchequer, 
which should normally be the heir to all private riches in excess of 
a quite moderate amount by way of family provision. But all this 
will not suffice. It will be imperative at the earliest possible mo- 
ment to free the nation from at any rate the greater part of its new 
load of interest-bearing debts for loans which ought to have been 
levied as taxation; and the Labour Party stands for a special Capi- 
tal Levy to pay off, if not the whole, a very substantial part of the 
entire National Debt — a Capital Levy chargeable like the Death 
Duties on all property, but (in order to secure approximate equality 
of sacrifice) with exemption of the smallest savings, and for the rest 
at rates very steeply graduated, so as to take only a small contribu- 
tion from the little people and a very much larger percentage from 
the millionaires. 

Over this issue of how the financial burden of the war is to be 
borne, and how the necessary revenue is to be raised, the greatest 
political battles will be fought. In this matter the Labour Party 
claims the support of four-fifths of the whole nation, for the interests 
of the clerk, the teacher, the doctor, the minister of religion, the 
average retail shopkeeper and trader, and all the mass of those living 
on small incomes are identical with those of the artisan. The land- 
lords, the financial magnates, the possessors of great fortunes will 
not, as a class, willingly forego the relative immunity that they have 
hitherto enjoyed. The present unfair subjection of the Co-opera- 
tive Society to an Excess Profits Tax on the '' profits " which it has 
never made — specially dangerous as " the thin end of the wedge " 
of penal taxation of this laudable form of Democratic enterprise — 
will not be abandoned without a struggle. Every possible effort 

[310] 



■will be made to juggle with the taxes, so as to place upon the 
shoulders of the mass of labouring folk and upon the struggling 
households of the professional men and small traders (as was done 
after every previous war) — whether by Customs or Excise Duties, 
by industrial monopolies, by unnecessarily high rates of postage and 
railway fares, or by a thousand and one other ingenious devices — 
an unfair share of the national burden. Against these efforts the 
Labour Party will take the firmest stand. 

THE SURPLUS FOR THE COMMON GOOD 

In the disposal of the surplus above the Standard of Life society 
has hitherto gone as far wrong as in its neglect to secure the neces- 
sary basis of any genuine industrial efficiency or decent social order. 
We have allowed the riches of our mines, the rental value of the 
lands superior to the margin of cultivation, the extra profits of the 
fortunate capitalists, even the material outcome of scientific dis- 
coveries — which ought by now to have made this Britain of ours 
immune from class poverty or from any widespread destitution — to 
be absorbed by individual proprietors; and then devoted very largely 
to the senseless luxury of an idle rich class. Against this misappro- 
priation of the wealth of the community, the Labour Party — speak- 
ing in the interests not of the wage-earners alone, but of every 
grade and section of producers by hand or by brain, not to mention 
also those of the generations that are to succeed us, and of the 
permanent welfare of the community — emphatically protests. One 
main Pillar of the House that the Labour Party intends to build is 
the future appropriation of the Surplus, not to the enlargement of 
any individual fortune, but to the Common Good. It is from this 
constantly arising Surplus (to be secured, on the one hand, by 
Nationalisation and Municipalisation and, on the other, by the 
steeply graduated Taxation of Private Income and Riches) that will 
have to be found the new capital which the community day by day 
needs for the perpetual improvement and increase of its various en- 
terprises, for which we shall decline to be dependent on the usury- 
exacting financiers. It is from the same source that has to be de- 
frayed the public provision for the Sick and Infirm of all kinds 
(including that for Maternity and Infantry) which is still so scanda- 
lously insufficient; for the Aged and those prematurely incapacitated 
by accident or disease, now in many ways so imperfectly cared for; 
for the Education alike of children, of adolescents and of adults, 
in which the Labour Party demands a genuine equality of oppor- 
tunity, overcoming all differences of material circumstances; and for 
the organization of public improvements of all kinds, including the 
brightening of the lives of those now condemned to almost ceaseless 
toil, and a great development of the means of recreation. From the 
same source must come the greatly increased public provision that 
the Labour Party will insist on being made for scientific investiga- 
tion and original research, in every branch of knowledge, not to say 
also for the promotion of music, literature and fine art, which 
have been under Capitalism so greatly neglected, and upon which, 
«o the Labour Party holds, any real development of civilization fun- 

[311J 



damentally depends. Society, like the individual, does not live by 
bread alone — does not exist only for perpetual wealth production. 
It is in the proposal for this appropriation of every surplus for the 
Common Good — in the vision of its resolute use for the building up 
of the community as a whole instead of for the magnification of in- 
dividual fortunes — that the Labour Party, as the Party of the Pro- 
ducers by hand or by brain, most distinctively marks itself off from 
the older political parties, standing, as these do essentially for the 
maintenance, unimpaired of the perpetual private mortgage upon the 
annual product of the nation that is involved in the individual own- 
ership of land and capital. 

THE STREET OF TOMORROW 

The House which the Labour Party intends to build, the four 
Pillars of which have now been described, does not stand alone in 
the world. Where will it be in the Street of Tomorrow? If we 
repudiate, on the one hand, the Imperialism that seeks to dominate 
other races, or to impose our own will on other parts of the British 
Empire, so we disclaim equally any conception of a selfish and in- 
sular " non-interventionism " unregarding of our special obligations 
to our fellow-citizens overseas; of the corporate duties of one nation 
to another; of the moral claims upon us of the non-adult races, and 
of our own indebtedness to the world of which we are part. We 
look for an ever-increasing intercourse, a constantly developing ex- 
change of commodities, a steadily growing mutual understanding, and 
a continually expanding friendly co-operation among all the peoples 
of the world. With regard to that great Commonwealth of all 
races, all colours, all religions and all degrees of civilization, that 
we call the British Empire, the Labour Party stands for its main- 
tenance and its progressive development on the lines of Local Au- 
tonomy and " Home Rule All Round " ; the fullest respect for the 
rights of each people, whatever its colour, to all the Democratic Self- 
Government of which it is capable, and to the proceeds of its own 
toil upon the resources of its own territorial home; and the closest 
possible co-operation among all the various members of what has 
become essentially not an Empire in the old sense, but a Britannic 
Alliance. We desire to maintain the most intimate relations with the 
Labour Parties overseas. Like them, we have no sympathy with 
the projects of " Imperial Federation " in so far as these imply 
the subjection to a common Imperial Legislature wielding coercive 
power (including dangerous facilities for coercive Imperial taxation 
and for enforced military service), either of the existing Self-Gov- 
erning Dominions, whose autonomy would be thereby invaded ; or 
of the United Kingdom, whose freedom of Democratic Self-develop- 
ment would be thereby hampered ; or of India and the Colonial De- 
pendencies, which would thereby run the risk of being further ex- 
ploited for the benefit of a " White Empire." We do not intend, by 
any such " Imperial Senate," either to bring the plutocracy of Can- 
ada and South Africa to the aid of the British aristocracy or to en- 
able the landlords and financiers of the Mother Country to unite in 
controlling the growing Popular Democracies overseas. The absolute 

[312] 



autonomy of each self-governing part of the Empire must be main- 
tained intact. What we look for, besides a constant progress in 
Democratic Self-Government of every part of the Britannic Alliance, 
and especially in India, is a continuous participation of the Minis- 
ters of the Dominions of India, and eventually of other Dependencies 
(perhaps by means of their own Ministers specially resident in Lon- 
don for this purpose) in the most confidential deliberations of the 
Cabinet, so far as Foreign Policy and Imperial Affairs are concerned ; 
and the annual assembly of an Imperial Council, representing all 
constituents of the Britannic Alliance and all parties in their Local 
Legislatures, which should discuss all matters of common interest, 
but only in order to make recommendations for the simultaneous con- 
sideration of the various autonomous local legislatures of what 
should increasingly take the constitutional form of an Alliance of 
Free Nations. And we carry the idea further. As regards our re- 
lations to Foreign Countries, we disavow and disclaim any desire 
or intention to dispossess or to impoverish any other State or Na- 
tion. We seek no increase of territory. We disclaim all idea of 
" economic war." We ourselves object to all Protective Customs 
Tariffs; but we hold that each nation must be left free to do what 
it thinks best for its own economic development, without thought of 
injuring others. We believe that nations are in no way damaged by 
each other's economic prosperity or commercial progress; but, on the 
contrary, that they are actually themselves mutually enriched thereby. 
We would therefore put an end to the old entanglements and mys- 
tifications of Secret Diplomacy and the formation of Leagues against 
Leagues. We stand for the immediate establishment, actually as a 
part of the Treaty of Peace with which the present war will end, 
of a Universal League or Society of Nations, a Supernational Au- 
thority, with an International High Court to try all justiciable issues 
between nations ; an International Legislature to enact such common 
laws as can be mutually agreed upon, and an Interational Council of 
Mediation to endeavour to settle without ultimate conflict even those 
disputes which are not justiciable. We would have all the nations 
of the world most solemnly undertake and promise to make a com- 
mon cause against any one of them that broke away from this funda- 
mental agreement. The world has suffered too much from war for 
the Labour Party to have any other policy than that of lasting Peace. 

MORE LIGHT — BUT ALSO MORE WARMTH! 

The Labour Party is far from assuming that it possesses a key to 
open all locks; or that any policy which it can formulate will solve 
all the problems that beset us. But we deem it important to our- 
selves as well as to those v/ho may, on the one hand, wish to join 
the Party, or, on the other, to take up arms against it, to make quite 
clear and definite our aim and purpose. The Labour Party wants 
that aim and purpose, as set forth in the preceding pages, with all 
its might. It calls for more warmth in politics, for much less 
apathetic acquiescence in the miseries that exist, for none of the 
cynicism that saps the life of leisure. On the other hand, the Labour 
Party has no belief in any of the problems of the world being 

[313] 



solved by Good Will alone. Good Will without knowledge is Warmth 
without Light. Especially in all the complexities of politics, in the 
still undeveloped Science of Society, the Labour Party stands for in- 
creased study, for the scientific investigation of each succeeding prob- 
lem, for the deliberate organization of research, and for a much more 
rapid dissemination among the whole people of all the science that 
exists. And it is perhaps specially the Labour Party that has the 
duty of placing this Advancement of science in the forefront of 
its political programme. What the Labour Party stands for in all 
fields of life is, essentially. Democratic Co-operation; and Co-opera- 
tion involves a common purpose which can be agreed to; a common 
plan which can be explained and discussed, and such a measure of 
success in the adaptation of means to ends as will ensure a common 
satisfaction. An autocratic Sultan may govern without science if his 
whim is law. A Plutocratic Party may choose to ignore science, if it 
is heedless whether its pretended solutions of social problems that 
may win political triumphs ultimately succeed or fail. But no La- 
bour Party can hope to maintain its position unless its proposals are, 
in fact, the outcome of the best Political Science of its time; or to 
fulfil its purpose unless that science is continually wresting new fields 
from human ignorance. Hence, although the purpose of the Labour 
Party must, by the law of its being, remain for all time unchanged, 
its Policy and its Programme will, we hope, undergo a perpetual 
development, as knowledge grows, and as new phases of the social 
problem present themselves, in a continually finer adjustment of our 
measures to our ends. If Law is the Mother of Freedom, Science, 
to the Labour Party, must be the Parent of Law. 



[314] 



APPENDIX II 

The following is the full text of the tentative programme sug- 
gested by the party led by Mr. Lansbury and published in the Lon- 
don Herald some eighteen months previous to the publication of the 
Report on Reconstruction of the Labour Party. 

CONSCRIPTION OF WEALTH AND EQUALITY OF 

INCOME. 

{a) Expropriation of private landowners and capitalists. No com- 
pensation beyond an ample provision against individual hard- 
ship. 

{b) All men and women willing to work to be paid, even when their 
work happens to be not needed, just as soldiers are paid when 
they are not fighting. Equal payment for all to be the result at 
which reorganization shall aim. 

(c) Instead of the present capitalistic methods of production 

OWNERSHIP BY THE STATE: MANAGEMENT BY THE WORKERS. 

This shall be applied immediately to the case of Mines, Rail- 
ways, Shipping, Shipbuilding, and Engineering, Electric Light 
and Power, Gas and Water. 
{d) The National properties in Mines, Railways, Shipping, Land so 
created to be leased to the Unions on conditions which will 
ensure every member at present money value a 

MINIMUM REAL INCOME OF ONE POUND A DAY. 

ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE OF ALL MEN AND WOMEN. 

Until such time as the whole industry of the country can be or- 
ganized upon the basis indicated above, the workers in industries 
not embraced in the above list — including those whose work is that 
of the household and the bringing up of children — shall be assured 
a similar standard of life by one, or a combination, of the following 
means: 

{a) A high minimum wage guaranteed by the State through a levy 
upon the profits of unexpropriated capitalists. 

(b) Continuation and increase of present war allowances to the 
women and children of soldiers' families. 

(c) Increase of maternity benefits and maintenance of children dur- 
ing school age. 

(d) Great increase of old-age pensions beginning at an earlier age 
than at present. 

I315] 



(e) RevisioH of war and other pensions periodically in accordance 

with the increased cost of living. 
,(/) Increase of soldiers' pay to Australian, Canadian and New 
Zealand standards. 

Those classes who have sanctioned and approved the con- 
scription of men, cannot on any moral ground object to the 
conscription of money — expropriation of property owners for 
national purposes. Indeed the latter has justifications which 
cannot be invoked for the former. 

Not only must we assure to all our workers an income on 
which a reasonable life can be led: we must also create condi- 
tions in which work ceases to be mere drudgery under a ruling 
class, whether of bureaucrats or capitalists. By taking over 
the management of industry the workers will be realizing free- 
dom and democracy in their daily labour. The nationalization 
of industry will not subject the workers to the discipline of a 
bureaucratic machine, but enable them through the Unions to 
organize production in the interest of all. State ownership of 
the means of production, balanced by the control of industry 
by organized Labour, offers the best, and indeed the only guar- 
antee of individual freedom in an industrial society. 

In the case of the Post Office we already have the first half 
of the principle — ownership by the State — and there is now a 
powerful movement towards the second half — management by 
the workers. 

As to the practicability of the minimum income indicated 
above, the economic facts of the war prove conclusively that 
a minimum real income of a pound a day, present value, for 
every worker is quite attainable. The country is spending 
eight millions a day on the war alone. Very nearly the whole 
of the wealth represented by that sum, together luilh the wealth 
necessary for the support of the ci'vilian population, is created 
by the labour of not much more than eight million workers. 
In peace time there are not more than fifteen million avail- 
able workers, including men, women and children. More than 
half of this number is now withdrawn for the army or unpro- 
ductive army work, like munitions. Making every allowance 
for such of the army as do productive work, the support of the 
army and the country now falls upon half the usual available 
workers, the half which includes the older people and the 
children. This calculation is not seriously affected by the 
argument that we are " living on credit." It is not true, in 
the sense that we are consuming wealth that we are not now 
creating, save to a very tiny extent. The amount that America 
sends to us " on credit " is about offset by the amount that we 
send to our Allies " on credit." And although the Government 
may pay for its purchases by money borrowed from the capital- 
ist, that is merely in order to preserve the capitalist system. 
The actual material — munitions, clothing, etc. — is made by 
the workers noiu, not taken by some magic from past or future 
stores. And while it may be true that we are making war 
material instead of renewing necessary plant, we have official 

[316] 



assurance that that is so only to a small extent. The experi- 
ence of the war shows that, given a large and insistent demand 
— ensured during the last three years by the immense consump- 
tion of war — the wealth necessary to satisfy it can be produced 
far more easily than was generally supposed. The high con- 
sumption ensured during the last three years by war, must 
after the war be ensured by the high standard of living of the 
workers. Those now busy destroying good houses in France 
and Belgium must after the war be kept busy destroying bad 
ones in the slums and in building better ones ; and in all the 
work of readjustment and reconstruction necessary to ensure 
food and raw material, and a continually increasing produc- 
tivity in order to meet the continually increasing consumption 
of the workers. 

A COMPLETE DEMOCRACY. 

(a) Abolition of the House of Lords. Substitution for it of a 
Chamber based on the representation, not of geographical areas, 
but of occupations, industrial, professional and domestic, Labour 
and professional bodies thus becoming a constituent part of the 
country's government. 

Political and industrial reconstruction cannot be considered 
In complete abstraction from each other, and it is essential to 
any plan, even of political reconstruction, that the workers 
should have their own industrial Chamber — representative not 
of geographical areas, like the House of Commons, but of occu- 
pations, industries and professions. This body must sit, not for 
a few days in every year, but continuously. It must not merely 
pass resolutions and indicate policies, but have definite powers 
of initiative and control. It will represent the people in their 
capacity of producers, just as the present House of Commons is 
supposed to represent them, and as a reformed House of Com- 
mons will really represent them, in the capacity of consumers. 

(b) Abolition of all titles and State-granted honours. 

The traffic in titles has become a financial and moral pre- 
mium upon reactionary politics, as well as a subtle form of 
State bribery. 

(c) Full political rights for all men and women. Payment of Elec- 
tion expenses. 

(d) Democratization of Army and Navy (so long as they exist) by 
the eifective representation of the Rank and File in all military 
and naval administrations not dealing with strategy. Abolition 
of military discipline in its present form immediately on the 
conclusion of peace. 

Demobilization may last two or three years after the declara- 
tion of peace. During that time, unless the law is modified, 
men who had enlisted for the duration of the war may still be 
subject to restrictive forms of discipline and to the risk of being 
used for strike-breaking, etc. 
The Laws framed for the purpose of providing for Freedom of 
Conscience to be made effective. 

[317] 



Freedom of Speech and Press. The Right to Strike, and to advo- 
cate strikes. 



THE OPPORTUNITY TO ENJOY LIFE. 

(a) A freer Social Life: Increase of opportunities for Recreation, 
Sports, Clubs. Better Public Houses. 

(b) A high minimum standard of comfort to be set in all housing 
and similar schemes. 

(c) Education, both elementary and secondary, to be universal. No 
child labour, but maintenance of children during school age; 
small classes; immediate large increases in salaries of teachers. 

We put education under "enjoyment of life" because it is 
clear that the proper end of education is the proper enjoyment 
of life. The present outcry for better scientific and technical 
training, for the endowment of research in processes which may 
be adapted to commercial ends, and for similar so-called " edu- 
cational " developments, will miss the real educational end if, 
by centring exclusively upon mechanical or industrial efficiency, 
it disregards the necessity for leisure and enjoyment. The 
problem of education is not how to contribute to the production 
of greater material wealth, but how to nourish in every indi- 
vidual the desire for a full free life (since without that desire 
there is no hope of social progress) and the capacity for enjoy- 
ing a full free life (since without that capacity social progress 
is unmeaning). That part of education in this country which is 
known as " higher " has, in spite of its narrowness, at least one 
good point: it aims at being a liberal education — an education 
which is an end in itself, and not a mere means to " efficiency." 
This aim must be kept in view by education of all grades and 
all kinds. 



THE WORKERS ORGANIZED AGAINST WAR. 

(a) Communications between workers to be maintained in War as 
in Peace. 

(b) Negotiations to be instituted at once to end the present war on 
the following basis: 

The right of all people to decide their own destiny. 
No indemnities, but each belligerent to restore the damage he 
has done, or to compound such reparation by concessions to be 
agreed by negotiation. 

Equal access by all peoples to the trade and raw materials of 
the world. 

The government of non-European races in Africa to be re- 
garded as an international trust, with no exclusive advantages 
to the sovereign state; such populations not to be trained for 
war or subject to conscription or servile labour. 
All secret treaties, or treaties not ratified by the people to be 
void. 
Disarmament by International Agreement. 

[318] 



W 93 



If democracy is to be a reality in the future, the competition 
for preponderant military power, which necessarily militarizes 
all the nations taking part in it, must be brought to an end. 
But the attempt on the part of one nation to create over vast 
areas of the world special reserves for its own trade and in- 
dustry or to block therein the access of other nations to neces- 
sary raw materials, will be certain, sooner or later, to be 
resisted by military means. These conflicts, though the workers 
as a whole never benefit from them, are the main source of 
modern wars. The price of peace is equality of economic op- 
portunity for all nations big and little. If the arming of the 
black millions of Africa for the purpose of fighting the white 
man's quarrels is permitted, a new danger as well as a new 
horror will be added to civilization. If a people is not fit to 
share the privileges of the British Empire in the shape of self- 
government it should not be asked to share its burdens by fight- 
ing its wars. Forced fighting, like forced labour, is in such 
case, whatever it may be elsewhere, undisguised slavery. The 
only certain cure for war is disarmament. If the nations are 
not loaded they will not explode. 



[319] 













WERT n <^ ^. •; 

BOOKBINDING M <l.^ O 

Grantville. Pa ■ /vv O 

JULY ■ AUG 1989 ■ y _ . *U 

W« r« OuA/<iy Sound M 





